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pi in colors

flickr.com — each of the 10 possible decimals of the number pi is displayed by a distinct colored pixel.

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  • AstroPHX, on 10/12/2007, -5/+65Nerdelicious! Pi will never cease to amaze me. Dugg.
    • f8pc, on 10/12/2007, -7/+50Pi ceased to amaze me after the 2 millionth digital. Gah. :)
    • Dested, on 10/12/2007, -13/+58Anyone else see the face of god?
    • jwyles, on 10/12/2007, -40/+8Nothing surprising here, lets move along...
    • schrodiggity, on 10/12/2007, -1/+82reminds me of when I threw up friuity pebbles.
    • berwiki, on 10/12/2007, -25/+36Too bad the colors don't line up.

      Dont believe me, zoom in on the top left part of the image. 3.14159, there is no sequence that matches the 1 with another 1.

      Buried as Inaccurate.

      I could write the stupid program to do this, why would someone 'fake' it??
    • Godel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8This might be more interesting a different base number. Such as base 2.
    • LucasOman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19@berwiki

      I see it there. It starts with 3. So far, 3.1415926 look accurate.
    • snlildude87, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8@berwiki: there's no color for the period (don't count it)
    • LucasOman, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25@godel

      Or base pi. It would just be one red block.

      Haha.

      BTW, where are your friends Escher and Bach?
    • Matteos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13It's full of stars.
    • NeutrinoQ, on 10/12/2007, -12/+14Look! Can't youall see Jesus in there?

      Hmm, I'll just go back to my toast.

      :)
    • Sblader5, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12couldn't some better colors be used other than all the grays?
    • Tamriel, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10It's a magic eye!
    • Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7@Tamriel

      I honestly tried it, but it wasnt :'(
    • pozzoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Great! I'll post sqrt(2), e, sqrt(3)... we have so much real numbers and too little time...
    • chrisek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Here's a gradient version:
      www.flickr.com/photos/sidneysm/277691171/
    • PathDaemon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7And stereoscopic anal., same poster:
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidneysm/277699596/

      Looks like no faces of God... or else God's just really, really ugly.
    • blahblah, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2You see God when you cross your eyes. It's one of those magic illusion things.
    • cpmcd2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5BIGGER IS BETTER...


      http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=102585611&context=set-72157594180898707&size=o
    • ahsile, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1What's wrong with you guys... an article on PI and no link to my website. Sheesh. I'll give it to you then: http://zenwerx.com/pi.php
    • cpmcd2000, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Seeing that is like visiting Niagra falls...

      It is a once in a lifetime must see that is completely overwhelming to the eyes and it has worldwide significance...

      Lol.
    • rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3If Pi is never ending, how did this guy finish the image? Shouldn't he still be working on it?

      Add noise... 500... wow, that looks like Pi!
    • takeda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Nerdelicious! Pi will never cease to amaze me."

      Amaze you? C'mon!
      What would not amaze you? If it would turn out to look like a Steve Balmer's face?

      It would be amazing if it would turn to be ANYTHING BUT a random noise.
  • SimpleBinary, on 10/12/2007, -4/+66Dugg even though I'm color blind...
    • pozzoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11don't worry... noise is noise... color or not
    • lqqkout4elfy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Hey, if you stared at it long enough you'll realize Pi in color will generate a stereogram!
    • rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3My favorite Pi is Hair Pi!
  • Smwbigboss, on 10/12/2007, -3/+81So my TV was really just using pi this whole time...
    • tempusrob, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Noise" and "random" are essentially the same thing. (Slightly related, this is why an ideal encryption algorithm's output will look like pure randomness. Noise.) Pi being what it is, it *should* look like noise. If it didn't ... well, we'd have to rethink a lot of things. ; )
    • vvvv, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2The pi was the color of television tuned to a dead channel.
  • praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -0/+14Someone should do a grayscale version.
    • McGrude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19I think better would be a black/white version done using the binary representation of π.
    • merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17I'd like to see it in many different bases. A pattern that's clear in base-10 isn't always clear in base-2, for example. There's a clear pattern to the base-10 number 111,111,111. However, the binary representation, 11010011111011010111100011 has no obvious pattern.

      There may be some sort of pattern to pi, but looking at it only in base-10 is to look at only one of many representations.
    • praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -0/+20Wow...the nerdy ways of presenting this are endless.

      Math kicks ass.
    • qbaler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26I see a really simple pattern when I convert pi into base pi...
    • sc0ticus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7It's not interesting. The whole point of trancendental numbers is that there IS no pattern

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_number
    • skydivingdutch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Apparently you have never read Carl Sagan's Contact
    • ardellin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5***Spoiler for the book Contact***

      @skydivingdutch:

      Short response: Yes, you will find patterns, but that is expected from an infinite sequence of random numbers.

      Long response:
      "Actually, as it turns out there is a theorem which almost guarantees that Sagan's "fiction" about Pi is true. In particular, I have been referred to Theorem 146 in the book "An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers" by Hardy and Wright which proves that the set of numbers that do not contain every arbitrary finite sequence in their decimal expansion has measure zero. (In other words, if you "randomly" pick a number, you can expect its decimal expansion to contain every finite sequence including the Gettysberg Address and the next e-mail message that you will write written out in ASCII.) There is no guarantee that this will be true for the number Pi...but there is also no reason to doubt that it is true."

      quoted from http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT/mf55-spoiler.html
    • schnitzi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes, but the odds of finding something so distinct as a picture of a circle, as early in the sequence as they found it, are vanishingly small.
    • ardellin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Very true, which is why it helps that the book was a fiction. If you believe there is a hidden meaning in Pi, it is on blind faith or hope. That's fine if that's what you want to do, but why mention a fictional book in a manner that would seem to give authority to this idea? That was the meaning behind my last post.

      To me it is just a bunch of random numbers, of which you may notice pattern from time to time. So, I am in agreement with scoticus, in that this is not that interesting. Well, interesting enough to see, at least (geek admittance), but not enough to digg.
    • schnitzi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Agreed... What would be more interesting would be an applet that at least let you explore by choosing the number base and grid dimensions. I too am quite skeptical that anything would be found, but at the very least it would drive the point home to people that pi is largely (for practical purposes) random.

      I once posted a query on Usenet -- if you were to represent pi in base 26, and then let 0=A, 1=B, 2=C, etc, what is the shortest word of five or more letters that appears? The thread is here:

      http://groups.google.com.au/group/rec.puzzles/browse_frm/thread/45b34be920522684/c57a66bd56bbbcf7?tvc=1&q=pi+angel+thunk&hl=en#c57a66bd56bbbcf7
    • OrangeTide, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@ merreborn
      There are patterns in all bases.

      101010101010 in binary looks like 2730 in decimal. If there is a pattern to pi why would it be any more likely to be in base-10 than in base-2 ? (or base-11)
    • ardellin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5^^ nice. interesting thread you had there.
  • Homunculiheaded, on 10/12/2007, -1/+54I see the sailboat!
    • FrankZappa, on 10/12/2007, -19/+1I always appreciate an obscure quote.
    • merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19It's a schooner.
    • Cozmcphish, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Brenda?
    • Giever, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Ha ha ha ha. You dumb bastard. It's not a schooner... it's a Sailboat.
    • jkc120, on 10/12/2007, -9/+13@Giever

      A schooner IS a sailboat, STUPID HEAD!
    • HisTumness, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Why are people digging jkc120 down? Is three parts of a quote the most that diggers will tolerate? Any quote that goes farther than that gets buried?

      "You know what?! There IS NO Easter Bunny! Over there, that's just a guy in a suit!"
  • doddilus, on 10/12/2007, -29/+9OMG I SEE THE VIRGIN MARRY
  • KyotoWolf, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5someone was bored...
  • Bob042, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4If you squint your eyes, you'll notice it's actually an autostereogram. At least, that's what I was half expecting. (Those 2D pictures that have a 3D image in them if you look just right.)
    • Crass22, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10no its not.
    • markp93, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6if you squint your eyes you see jesus, or pancakes or whatever...
  • kcolagio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7OK, just a neat idea.

    I wonder what happens if you change the width of the image....any ideas if a pattern will emerge?
    • ConceptJunkie, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Nope. The digits of pi are, for all intents and purposes, randomly distributed.

    • SnowBladerX, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25Prove the digits are random :)
    • FrankZappa, on 10/12/2007, -15/+4Better yet prove that their not.
    • merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+26"Prove the digits are random :)"

      Depends on what you mean by random. If you mean that they don't form any sort of simple pattern, it's been done, by some of the brightest mathematicians history has known. Ferdinand von Lindemann proved pi was transcendental in 1882.

      But really, by the strictest definition of random, pi is the exact oposite of random. It's a very non-random and well-defined number. pi will always be greater than 3.14159 and less than 3.14160. The nth digit of pi will always be the nth digit of pi; it's a constant, not a random number.
    • boomortmarkson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@merreborn: Actually, being transcendental has nothing to do with the digits appearing random. There are transcendental numbers whose digits follow very simple patterns; for example, the number whose decimal expansion is a 1 at the place n! and a 0 elsewhere.

      There is something called a "normal number" which is roughly a number whose decimal expansion appears random (more precisely it means each sequence of digits appears as often as you would expect if the digits were truly random). It isn't known whether pi, e, or sqrt(2) is normal, but we believe all three are. It is even conjectured that every irrational algebraic number (such as sqrt(2)) is normal. For all we know, if you look at the decimal expansion of pi, you could only see 0 and 1 after a certain point.
  • Inevitable.Fate, on 10/12/2007, -3/+41 What you need is a fatty-boom-batty blunt, and I guarantee you'll be seeing a sailboat, an ocean, and maybe even some of those big-titted mermaids doing some of that lesbian *****.
  • swanny89, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17What'd be really funny if a a big PWNED! or a hand flipping us off appeared, showing that pi actually does have a pattern.
    • ilyag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6You should read Carl Sagan's novel, "Contact". The 'surprise' ending is very similar to what you said (the movie version of this novel didn't include it).
    • Cyberdactyl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I ran this algorithm out to 9,342,276,923 places and a red circle appears. I'm freaking out.
    • markp93, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4the "surprise" ending is that pi = 3 . there, I've said it :)
    • ajuc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've searching patterns in Pi for fun some time ago, and I've got idea that printing expansion in rectangle table is wrong. We set width of this table arbitrary, and any there is small chance that we'd choose it exactly the same as this "Person" that encoded pattern in Pi.

      Maybe it will be better to print it from center of infinite plane like spiral. Then size of our screen isn't important, it only matters if we choose to curl left or right.

      BTW No, I don't really believe that there is pattern in Pi we should seek. But it's cool to try :)

      And about "randomness" of Pi. It's constant number, so there must be some pattern - exactly the same pattern we use to calculate it's digits. If we seek another patterns in it, we really seek for mathematical relations, and if we found one, it will be some math law we don't consider for this purpose yet, or don't even know about.

      Maybe I'm wrong, and for sure my English is wrong. Sorry.
  • darkstar949, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2So where is the circle at?

    (Contact reference)
  • bryanjones, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Is it just me or does anyone else see vertical striations?
  • wckdjugallo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Stupid work access. Can someone mirror this so I can see it plz?
    • aaronm67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2www.mizzou.edu/~agm257/pi.jpg
    • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Do you have a C compiler?
      Run a random array that fills the screen with pixels.
  • americaskate, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1I think the colours arent arrange correctly. If you zoom in the top left colour is purple.
    Shouldnt it be blue?
  • eulergamma, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Come on, 10 is no special number (besides the number of fingers we have); why not binary? It's the smallest natural number that can represent any real number, which makes it cool.

    "There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't



    ... and those who confuse it with ternary" :-)
    • airship, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4It WOULD be cool to see this image in different bases. Then overlay them like in the movie Contact. Maybe we'd get the design for a transdimensional spinning thingie.
    • merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary and 9 other types.
    • vikingcoder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't... what? shush... we don't speak of those fourteen other types anymore.
    • eulergamma, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Not to be arbitrary, especially with such an old joke, but put a little spin in to it:
      "There are 10 types of people in this world:
      Those who understand base-2
      Those who confuse it with base-3
      Those who confuse it with base-4
      Those who confuse it with base-5
      ..."

      Get it?
  • CGreen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Yo, I know pi to a thousand places.
  • xipotec, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3This is very uninteresting.
  • tmazon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5My TV does this too when there is no signal
  • LazyEric, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Wow, if you look at it long enough, and you kind of let your eyes lose focus, there's a sailboat hidden in there...
    • hosiah, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Hey, that's it! The secret of the Universe is a SAILBOAT!

      Yeah, we did it! We outwitted math! We're bad! O Ye-ah o ye-ah, we found the sailboat.

      Now what?
  • xeomage, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I agree that we'll never fully comprehend pi unless we look past our decimal numeric system. Note that I'm not necessarily saying that there is a pattern, and I'm sure some mathematicians have done that already, but in any case I think there's more to it than simply the decimal interpretation.
    • loikll, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Well YEAH there's more to it. It's the ratio of circumference to diameter of circle. THAT's what there is to it. Number base don't matter.
  • errer, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1duggmirror

    (for those with filters at work)
  • LucasOman, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3sorry, meant to reply to a diff post. digg down.
  • bleonard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Holy crappy graphical compression! The individual colored "pixels" run right into each other!
    • shit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2More like "holy Windows image viewer!"

      Open in MS Paint, or any other image viewing program, as the built-in XP one smooths PNGs.
  • Thorlord, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1they should add Primary numbers in Black....
  • nailz420, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1all i see is a bunch of dicks.
    • floridiot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Nono, that's just your homepage, click on the link.
  • loquax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wonder what a sound representation would sound like? You could do an even/odd tick, a high-bit tick (for off on digital), or something like that.
  • licoricewhip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I need to adjust my rabbit ears to get better pi reception.
  • longboarder543, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8It's amazing to me that somewhere in there is every digital work that has been or will ever be created. Even all the RIAA's "copyrighted" works.
    • colklink, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Way to go letting the cat out of the bag...now the RIAA is going to sue Pi!
  • ekrub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Is my memory failing me?

    I could swear I remember seeing this image whenever I booted up my Apple ][.
  • bbondy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4How many digits of pi is it?
  • Ragzouken, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Argh, JPEG, the colours aren't even the same anymore >:O
  • jessecurry, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I wonder if the pattern would appear less random if the row span were changed.
  • hansamurai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Can someone explain to me the point of making 0, 7, 8, and 9 all basically white?
  • MrCalifornia, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_%28novel%29#A_message_from_God_in_pi

    (in reference to the comments on Flickr)
    • compressedaudio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Any 'message' or pattern is found in pi should be expected as it may contain all possible combinations of numbers. You could probably find any shape or your own signature in there after time.
  • DjDimitrious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i wish there was a much higher res version of this.. then you could convert to .raw and encode as a wav file.. then we could hear pi!
  • t3hNinj4, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2No post about anything Pi related would be complete without HardNFirm's pi rap:

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=924236369691897191

  • ZaNkY, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There could possibly be a hidden image, but how would you define the length and width to show pi at?

    Who knows what one may come up with trying to vary these two.... :-D


    I for one would be interested in seeing pi via this method at a couple billion pixels by a couple billions pixels (or more?)
  • SellotapeGuy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Because I have too much time on my hands, I made a program that would do the same thing, but in greyscale.
    http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?300a11a818.gif
    Edit: That image host is *****. Anyone know one where I can upload a 600kb image?
  • Cyberdactyl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Look at it as a stereogram. . .a circle appears. . . .
  • robohoe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Feels like the effects of acid...
  • chungthomas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I wonder what number would draw Archimedes' face on the screen?
  • dchaosdx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"hahaha you dumb bastard, it's not a schooner, it's a sailboat!"
  • sdubois92, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1when i look closely at it, i see these weird cartoon characters. i must be hi
  • Zybex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Don't look too close. That's what took down Da5id.

    Where is Hiro Protagonist when you need him?
  • pentaneman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The real question is that is really infinite.
    So, if you use a random charset, Unicode for example, to decode the pi numbers into chars, given enough time you will find all buried beyond the zillionth number the whole Shakespear's works, several Mousse au Chocolat recipes, Life, the Universe and Everything.
  • fuelvolts, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Oh, it's a scooner!
  • sdubois92, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1yes it is willam
  • CeeJayDK, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Buried as inaccurate .. Why ? - Because the image is compressed with JPEG which is not a lossless compression algorithm.
    I download the image and checked with Irfanview : "Number of unique colors: 111435"
    There should only be 10 (+ 1 for the black background) colors.

    The image is now useless for seeing if we can visually detect some sort of pattern because the number represented is no longer pi , and any detected pattern is likely caused by the JPEG compression (which tends to make 16 x 16 pixel block patterns)
    • CeeJayDK, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Ah .. good news .. if you click view All Sizes and download the Large version , it is in PNG , which is a lossless format.
  • t0ny, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Mmmmmm Pi....
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