😈 If that doesn’t get me kicked out of ByS nuthin’ will, heh heh. 😇
Pi shows up in probability? What could have been the chances of that? (groan)
Pie doesn’t last long in our house.
The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
Each note is a record that we can refer to in the future as we try to understand the phenological patterns that are quietly unwinding around us. To have the Daily Bucket in your Activity Stream, visit Backyard Science’s profile page and click on Follow.
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As readers of my drivel may know, I struggled with mathematics until I joined the Navy in 1979 at age 24. Then I had to learn fundamental algebra and some trigonometry in order to complete my electronics technician training. I found it not so difficult after all, although I still really had to work at it. The point is, I no longer found it impossible. In fact, in many respects it was revealing, and pleasantly surprising. My ability to grapple, understand, and solve mathematical problems at that level led later on to full engineering calculus.
Now, what in the world does math, and especially the number pi, have to do with our main thrust here in the Daily Bucket, namely phenology?
Nothing, if that’s what you choose. You can note the cyclical changes in the natural world around you without having to calculate a single thing. Or, you can do something simple like keep a daily record of high and low outside temperatures. Hey, that involves numbers, right?
Thinking about and maybe even playing around with numbers and math might help you from despairing when you look out your window and realize you are pretty much housebound for the next several days.
Or…
Maybe mathematics has just about every darned thing conceivable to do with nature:
“...Today, many theoretical biologists and mathematicians believe that Turing’s system could also be applied to the patterns found in vegetation on the landscape, weather systems, and even to the formations of galaxies.”
[at the 2:04 mark]
That statement says a whole lot about numbers, and you can’t say much at all about numbers without invoking math, and the circle being one of the fundamental shapes of the natural world, well, pi just sort of pops out as being important, wouldn’t you say?
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One way I use numbers nearly every time I post a photo of my own here at Daily Kos is to crop the original photo, which usually takes up about 7.5 Mb. This can have the result of reducing the file size of an image down to half or better, which means the file uploads from my computer into the Kos Image Library much faster. This is kind of nice when you’ve got a dozen or more photos to load, and watching that bar move s — l — o — w — l — y across just drives ya, ahem, irrational!
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Square roots, that’s another matter.
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This is just cool to watch:
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Oh hey by golly, the rain slacked off a bit and I managed to get out; I had to pedal up to the library anyway, and whaddya know I found some critters.
Those rain drops? Just adjust the numbers and see what happens.
And… one of these:
Now it’s your turn. What’s up in your world, nature-wise? Let us know in the comments and as always please include your location, and photos if you got ‘em!