3.14 is Pi Day (March 14)

It would have been a lot more appropriate if I had thought about this two years ago.  March 14, 2016 would have been 3.14.16 - a much closer representation of the value of Pi.

Apart from the standard arithmetic symbols of + - ÷× and =, no other symbol is as well known as the 16th letter in the Greek alphabet; yet it is  dreaded like the plague by many high school students who anticipate that school work just got complicated by the prospect of having to use it. 


Or, an undeserved lesson in grammar. Consider Drabble's take on it:

"Pie are squared is incorrect, and it is bad grammar. It should be pie is round"

But David Blatner audaciously wrote a book the title of which made pi as deliciously enticing as pie.

Q:What do you get if you divide the circumference of a jack-o-lantern by its diameter?
A: Pumpkin Pie!

Corny humor aside, Pi is definitely a popular pop and comic strip icon of all math or Greek letter symbols. Rightly or wrongly people associate some of Pi's attributes to matters unrelated to its value or application. It begins with the fascination to calculate for its value to as many decimal points as possible, mostly for curiousity. Super computers have now calculated Pi to its 22 or more trillionth decimal point.  There is still no repeated pattern of the digits (unique attribute of every irrational numbers). But people see certain groupings of numbers: the first 144 digits when added total 666. And, of course, 144 is also equal to (6+6) X (6+6). Neither here nor there but some folks see certain errieness there. On the other hand, the sequence 123456789 appears exactly in that sequence, beginning at the 523,551,502nd digit.  By the way, after the one millionth decimal places, someone or a few others with too much time on their hands, noted that the ten digits 0 to 9 appear evenly distributed at about 100,000 times each (1/10 each of the total million digits). One person, Hiroyuki Goto, who has more memory power in his brain than a 1990's laptop, recited the digits of Pi to 42,000 places from memory. That was in 1995, so perhaps it may already have been broken; for what purpose, we don't know, other than to top Mr. Goto's prowess.

Albert Einstein's birthday is March 14 (3.14), a mere coincidence, but why did it have to be? It is also a coincidence that pie happens to be a most beloved dessert and circular as the standard pizza that both begin with the two letters pi. We also conventionally slice them along the lines close to the diameter. Each slice, if you notice, is formed by two converging lines that are the radii (plural of radius) and a chord (partial part) of the circle. That's neither nor there too but at least it is a noble attempt at a fair distribution, if there is more than one diner.

What is amazing about Pi is that it had existed in nature since the beginning of time but it took a while for us to discover it. There is no actual record of exactly when it was but a glimmer of it apparently came about more than a thousand and a half years BC. It might seem like a long time ago but from the context of the age of the universe it is a millionth of the blink of an eye, whereas Pi was already operating as a rule maker for the circular and spherical shapes of stars, galaxies, planets and their orbits. It was there to influence the shapes of all creatures' eyes, the arrangement of sun flower petals, cross sections of tornadoes and hurricanes, the perfect configuration of wheels and cylinders, droplets of liquid, the propagation of sound waves, etc. Pi had to be discovered first before Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz independently invented calculus. 

What is it about Pi that fascinates and perplexes people throughout history? Folks who loved to measure things first observed that when they measured the circumference of a circle and compared it to its diameter (not a bad relationship), the proportion remained consistent regardless of the size of the circle. Early values of the ratio were used for centuries to the satisfaction of a lot of people.Later on, that ratio of the circumference divided by the diameter was refined even more to the popular value of 3.1416, which is very adequate for all intents and purposes. It  was fine for commerce and other applications. 

The bottom line is this: Human discovery and understanding of Pi - no other single concept had so much influence - gave us the civilization we have and the definition of how technology developed. The invention of the wheel was history changing but the leaps and bounds we've achieved begun with our understanding of Pi. Manufacturing the different sizes of wheels, gears, ball bearings and pulleys, circumnavigation, calculating trajectories of rockets and projectiles, everything we can think of that involves circles, parts of circles, cylindrical pipes and containers, spheres and hemispherical structures, etc. were made possible by our understanding of Pi.

Pi and its never ending decimal points, non-repeating pattern, are about as close as we will get to grasping or have a feel for infinity. After all, a circle is a polygon with an infinite number of sides. "Going in circles" defines our earth without an edge or surface boundary allowing us to come back where we came from without retracing our steps but by just simply going forward. Which also says, by the way, that any straight line, no matter how long, is still part of an infinitely large circle. Let that sink in for a minute. Remember that the field of grass or meadow we see, the wide expanse of an ocean, all seemingly flat are parts of a sphere. And earth is not exactly an infinitely large body. It is even theorized that if we shine a powerful enough laser and its light goes out unimpeded, remaining coherent (not spreading), it will after an infinite amount of time come back where it begun. 



That's about as nerdy as I will go but for those willing to take more mental punishment, I recommend reading about why Pi is more than just an irrational number - it is transcendental, though it has nothing to do with meditation. Or. you may want to find out why not all irrational numbers are transcendental, although all transcendental numbers are irrational but not having to do with inability to be reasonable or logical.


Let's just  give a moment to celebrate Pi. 

The Wisdom of Crowds

Not known as a special scientific principle but widely recognized, even accepted, is the idea that a "collective" in a large group of people is smarter than a single individual. Let's make this clear from the beginning with an example. Recall the game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?".  Often the contestant when needing a lifeline calls an expert friend first, then 50-50, and almost always last is the audience (whose average answer is revealed, showing percentages of their pick from the multiple choice). The contestants seemed mostly unaware that the audience is almost always correct (not all the time but it is vastly more reliable). The wisdom of the crowd even beats the expert. I have a point to make here, I think.

   

 "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.

 The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton's surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members)".

Using a jar of jelly beans in a similar experiment worked just as well. Random people were asked to guess how many jelly beans there were in a transparent jar that contained over a thousand of the multi-colored candies, so there was a certain degree of difficulty. People's answers - guesses and educated estimates - were all over the place. But when averaged, the number was closer to the actual count, to within 1%. Hardly was any one individual's answer correct or even close. Yet, the "collective" (average) proved powerful.

Wisdom of the crowd is the statistical phenomenon of combining "diverse, independent and decentralized sources" to arrive at an intelligent choice.

The science of statistics define the wisdom of the crowd. Sampling or polling is the tool for determining the result without having to ask everyone. What a pot of soup would taste like after a thorough mixing can be determined with a teaspoonful sample - and it would be accurate.

Consumer Report's reliability ratings for cars is another good example of wisdom of the crowds. As a subscriber I had responded to a number of CR's annual surveys and I will have to say the ratings are quite accurate based on how they gather the data. Not every response will be positive for a particular model (there will always be lemons) but when the average of all the responses is taken the CR rating is an excellent indicator of the quality of the product.

This brings us to the concept of democracy. Is the majority the wisdom of the crowd? My musing on the subject, as in many others before this, would be of little value if it does not present a view outside of what is commonly believed. My hope is that it represents the average of the readers. In 2016 the Republican primary started with 17 or 18 candidates. As diverse as the number of aspirants were, the wisdom of the crowd was called for since there was no way an immediate and decisive majority was expected to favor one candidate. On the other hand, the Democratic primary looked like a foregone conclusion - a prelude to a coronation of a favored candidate. The wisdom of the crowd was replaced by well placed operatives that made sure the coronation was unimpeded. And it went flawlessly, which contrasted with the glaring chaos in the Republican Party. The general election result was so assuredly predictable that the New York Times gave the Republican candidate a 1-99% odds of winning.

The wisdom of the crowd was so well hidden that it was even invisible to all the pollsters.  The shock to every pollster, every political pundit, and to every political scientist (with doctorates in political science in college) who by the way truly believe that politics is truly a branch of science, reverberated with echoes of a gigantic oops!

What went wrong? Nothing. There was enough drama but should not have impacted the results as to defy the wisdom of the crowds. It was obvious that there was no monolithic criteria. There were diverse reasons held by the electorate and in the end, while there was no clear overwhelming single issue, the average of the collective thought favored one candidate over the other. Perhaps the result was well hidden because it was not predicted by the standard method. There may not have been one singular issue favored by the majority but by many seemingly unconnected elements.  But when averaged, it actually reflected the aggregate populist sentiments. A populist won over an ideologue. 

Democracy, though far from the benevolent ideal of an Omnipotent, Fair, all-knowing God managing our affairs, is the best we can have. In its present form, however, it had devolved from what it was originally intended. A representative government requires that people/voters get to cast a single vote each, the tallied result is the wisdom of the people. However, conditions have changed so that today money, which mobilizes modern political campaigning, can and had, in fact, destabilized the system when resources of one candidate far exceeded the other/s. The wisdom of the crowd was effectively dumbed-down; or worse, manipulated. The democratic principle, which should be the proper application of the collective wisdom of the population, can be compromised and may already have been irreparably damaged in today's electronic world of instant communication where opaque sourcing of information has ironically corrupted the dissemination of information. Information should be free from manipulation if everything was transparently above board. But that ship had already sailed.

The wisdom of the crowd has also been dimmed by today's sympathetic attention to the views of a minority against the wishes of (often) an overwhelming majority.  When a lone student can cause a teacher to be suspended for the latter's opinion when everyone else felt no offense was committed  then the wisdom of the crowd had been reduced to the opinion of a single individual. As a result, in this case, the other students representing the wisdom of the crowd protested  the decision of the school board en masse. 

In America never had issues coming from a number of various minority groups seem, or made to look like the voice of a far larger entity, been more influential than the majority that is often silenced. When a very thin slice of the population can cause the removal of historical statues, signs or relics in government buildings, or push regulations and laws adversely affecting the majority as to cause them broad  hardship, the wisdom of the crowd is rendered inutile.  Political correctness has become the chronic disease that plagues our society today. It is almost a sociological pathogen that defies a cure. Common sense is no longer a reliable vaccine because political correctness evolves virally rapidly and uncontrollably.

Let's take the case of celebrities. Their livelihood depends on favorability ratings they get from their fans who ought to come from all walks of life. When they inject politics into their public opinions, they must accept that they could be going against the wisdom of 50% of their fans (the nation being divided as such politically). They have every right to express their opinions, no question about that, with full guarantee provided by the Constitution, but if they're in the business of entertaining they could automatically diminish almost half of their earning potential and adulation by declining the wisdom of half the crowd. Again, there is nothing wrong with their public show of opinion, except it goes against something they strove hard to attain - popularity and acclaim. But if they wholeheartedly feel it is worth the sacrifice, then more power to them; though we must question the wisdom of their decision - their individual opinion versus the wisdom of the crowd.

  

Democracy. Why is this a fairly new phenomenon in the context of history? In fact, from millennia after millennia, the world had only known monarchy as a ruling system until much later with the introduction of democracy in Athens in 500 BC. But it was short lived with plenty of interruptions later from monarchs and oligarchs for centuries, as if democracy was just another failed sociological experiment.  It struggled to survive. Then the American revolution happened. Lest we forget the U.S. democracy is, so far, the longest running succession of leadership from free and effective elections.

The question has always been about why it took so long when the science of the wisdom of the crowds seems so natural.  But, is it? Well, in the natural world, except for the human species, democracy is nowhere to be found. The empire of the ants and termites are ruled by absolute monarchs - powerful queens that rule absolutely. Even herds of elephants, prides of lions and pods of whales, abide by the leadership of one. Succession can be violent, in some cases new leadership is preceded by the death of the incumbent.

  

There lies the difference, but here lies the dichotomy. Wisdom from our human context, once we've become sufficiently wise, superseded instincts, in a manner where the collective thought is the aggregate of the choices of individuals as to give each one a meaningful sense of his or her stake on the social structure. On the other hand, ants and termites merely heed the wisdom of one where, for reasons of efficiency and effectiveness, nature has provided them with natural instincts to do that. Electing a queen, matriarchs or alpha male or female leaders will take time. But here's the thing. Once leadership is established, the wisdom of the herd takes over - instinctively behaving as one collective organism.

  

Democracy, while not perfect, has provided civilization an alternative system of checks and balances while assigning a value to the individual. Alternatively, monarchy, socialism and communism, have not risen above the structure of the termite colony. We are not diminishing the successes of the ants and termites and other herding instincts in the animal world because they may prove to be the true inheritors of the earth if we mess up, but there is one limiting factor. The value of the individual is both invisible and insignificant in a colony. However, the collection of all the individuals are what provides the power of the monarchy. The insect colony continues to thrive but human monarchy, socialism and communism are on the decline. They will continue to eke out a prolonged existence to the detriment of the crowd but only benefiting the individual (the monarch) or a handful of individuals (the Communist Secretariat or the socialist bureaucracy).

Thank goodness for the wisdom of the crowds we may yet hold on to our individual freedom. Common sense may yet re-emerge to predominance and may the wisdom of the crowds restore order over the chaos of extreme political correctness. May common sense triumph over ideology.

Anatomy of the Argument

Nothing vexes personal relationships than silly arguments. We know it can be infuriating and exasperating. And that is a very mild side-effect compared to where we sometimes find ourselves - deep in a hole that shouldn't have been dug in the first place. Then as we look up from the bottom of that hole we see a bright light and behold, we ask ourselves, "Why didn't I see that before?" You see, if we knew ahead of time where one doltish argument will take us, we would have taken two steps back before lurching half a foot forward. We notice that the deeper the hole the more it quickly resembles a long tunnel and how we now long to reach that light at the end of it, and be out of the predicament we created from the silliness of it all. Arguments that escalate to levels we don't really want cause temporary mental blindness that could lead to permanent regret.

Argument: "an exchange of diverging or opposite views, typically a heated or angry one".

  

I read, and I cannot attest as to how true it is, that more than half of arguments between people, man and wife, two friends, neighbors begin as a conversation over trivial things. If that is the case, why are we not capable of retracing the steps each side took to get to the proverbial hole, and get out of it?  The problem, of course, is that soon the argument had summoned peripheral elements into the discussion, feeding more heat into it - like a vortex sucking every little piece nearby that had nothing to do with the original focus of the discussion. A hurricane will keep its devastating circulation for as long as heat from the surrounding atmosphere keeps adding to it. Only cooler air drains the hurricane's energy just as cooler heads often put an end to or prevents arguments from intensifying into places people may not be able to come back from.

 The other tangential pieces that come into play are those plucked from memories, some from not too long ago while others from the deep recesses of an almost forgotten past. They are remembered but only if accurately so; however, we find ourselves being confronted by a set of altered memories, more often than not, kept too long as ammunition but not realizing that gunpowder does have an expiration date. And they're used by the opposing protagonists in an argument - the best scenario being that they could only be firing blanks all along, with reconciliation as the moral equivalent of a peace treaty.

  

Sometimes arguments ensue from things that should have been well below the threshold of silliness. Unfortunately, thresholds are defined differently from one person to the next. Generally, men seems to have a higher threshold than women when it comes to defining what is important and what is trivial. A husband may forget to do something once or twice and to him that might seem trivial. Anyhow, it may start a little argument. The pitfall a husband soon realizes is that  a host of so many other little misdeeds are retrieved from his dear wife's vast storehouse of memories. How many times did he forget to close the refrigerator door tightly, left a toothpaste tube uncapped, plates, coffee mugs and utensils left on the table when the sink is a mere 7-1/2 feet away. Dirty clothes, articles of clothing, that did not make it to the hamper twice or thrice are treated like articles for impeachment. Improperly shut refrigerator doors may thaw some of the food inside but is it worth the cold shoulder that lasts  for a day?

In all fairness, husbands are not immune from memory issues. That is, we forget often. Worse, however, is forgetting something over and over. We can't blame our wives for suspecting that we do it on purpose. We really don't forget, we only fail to commit them to memory. Men, husbands in particular, as a whole sleep well and how quickly they fall into it is legendary. Men fall asleep with the lights on, TV blaring, and explosions will wake them up only if it is within a 100-yard radius.

  

What perpetuates an argument lies in the eternal view that winning is paramount when, in fact, nobody really wins. The ecstasy of victory only lasts for a moment, a battle won is not worth the agony of regret. Below is a popular quote whose authorship or endorsement is no longer acknowledged by either man or woman. But its truth remains.

"A woman has the last word in any argument.

Anything a man says after that is the beginning of another argument."

Please simulate dead silence for a moment because I share the only antidote known by man.

Thus, all I have to say now is "Yes Dear".