For a project we're working on right now, we want to pull a Donald Knuth and have a version number that converged towards some irrational number. However, we don't want to use something boring like pi, e, sqrt(2), etc. Is there an irrational number that is particularly relevant to computer science that we could employ?
I made myself a beaded bracelet with this number on it. It is the best number ever. Truly!
Ether
2009-11-27 16:33:27
The golden ratio is traditionally associated with perfection, so as your version numbers increase your program asymptotically tends towards perfection :)
thecoop
2009-11-27 16:46:27
And makes for a great logo, too.
Aaron Digulla
2009-11-27 16:59:11
+1
A:
pi and e are also transcendental numbers.
Check out some known transcendental numbers.
Nick D
2009-11-27 16:34:53
A:
The amount of money on Bill Gates bank account divided by the number of bugs in M$'s product? Pretty irrational to me ;) Only it's always shifting ... So you may end up with version numbers that are going backwards ... Or would they ... hmmm ...
The number would get smaller if Bill's bank account would shrink (okay, that happens: He's spending billions on charity) or when the number of bugs goes up.
Conclusion: It would be version number that's a) irrational, b) steadily shrinking over a longer period of time and c) funny. Bill's bank account can be found in Forbes list. It's updated every year which should be OK unless you plan for more releases. It's not 100% accurate but we're dealing with such big numbers, it shouldn't matter until you need more than 5 digits of precision.
Now the number of bugs might be somewhat hard to get by. Maybe ask the guy who posted "still 65'000 bugs left in Vista"?
Aaron Digulla
2009-11-27 16:43:27
Dude, it's not 1995 anymore, Bill Gates/Microsoft bashing is soooo nineties and 2010 is just around the corner... You have stay up to date, cool people hate staticly typed languages this week.
DrJokepu
2009-11-27 17:30:04
Yeah, it's true ... but still ... couldn't really pass this one up. Makes me wonder if that number would be >> 1, around 1 or << 1 :)
Aaron Digulla
2009-11-27 17:59:38
+1
A:
π in Base 3: 10.0102110…
Or iⁱ = 0.207879576… or whatever that is in base 3.
Debilski
2009-11-27 16:58:14