They’re probably the only things that “create” information in the sense that you can always grab another slice. Thank you delicious pi!

  • @AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    13
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    Irrational number do not “create” information, they simply contain every possible combination of digits. Given enought time you could find any pattern you wanted that represents some “information”, you could also find an infinite amount of patterns that represent false “information”. You cannot pick out a set of digits of pi and use that to learn something other than that set of digits.

  • xigoi
    link
    fedilink
    English
    211 month ago

    I think you’re somewhat confused about what “irrational” and “information” means.

      • xigoi
        link
        fedilink
        English
        141 month ago

        An irrational number is just a number that cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers. There is nothing deeper about it.

  • @discimus@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    241 month ago

    Any infinite group applies to this too. The group of integers, real numbers, etc. are infinite. Just add 1 👍

    • @josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      21 month ago

      True although I would like to note that the digits of Pi are the heart of r-n jesus and the number line just does boring stuff like steadily increasing forever.

  • According to your reasoning, the Fibonacci numbers, or repeatedly applying a math operation to a number are infinite sources of information

    • @josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      41 month ago

      Nah I replied to someone else with a similar thought. The Notorious Fibs sure I agree with you they are new information, similar to the primes but just adding +1 over an over again or even some repeating pattern doesn’t add new information beyond the initial pattern.

  • Justin
    link
    fedilink
    321 month ago

    Is it actually information? I can give you the number two, but it’s not useful information until I also tell you which digit is significant and what the number means. Communicating information is still limited by the speed of light.

    • @radix@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      111 month ago

      From one of my favorite college professors: apparently in the Chevy Chase days of Saturday Night Live he would do the Weekend Update and had a recurring bit that went like this.

      And now it’s time for the basketball scores. 98-82; 102-99; 95-76.


      That’s data. Without context there’s no useful information.

    • @Gork@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      51 month ago

      Situationally, yes. “I want the next digit of pi” is information in that sense of the word. It’s not a particularly useful piece of information unless you’re building something that requires a circle with a circumferential precision larger than the width of our entire universe.

      • @josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
        link
        fedilink
        11 month ago

        How many digits of Pi would you have to read for you to be able to reconstruct all of the information in the Universe up to this moment?

        • xigoi
          link
          fedilink
          English
          51 month ago

          None, because the digits of π have absolutely nothing to do with the universe.

    • Deebster
      link
      fedilink
      81 month ago

      I don’t see why not, it’s just numbers, which is all we store most data as.

      You could use it as a source of pseudorandom numbers to encrypt an infinite data steam, e.g. we’ll encrypt using e, starting at position 40468.

        • Deebster
          link
          fedilink
          41 month ago

          It’s irrational, which just appears random (which is why I said pseudorandom).

        • @uis@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          41 month ago

          It is not. If I in July in Europe will say “there is no snow outside”, I give you very little information. If in same conditions I will say “there is snow outside”, I will give a lot of information.

          Amount of information is proportional to (logarithm of) improbability of outcome.

    • @uis@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      11 month ago

      Is it actually information?

      Yes. For every bit of number pi you get one bit of information.

      I can give you the number two

      You gave me log2(10) bits of information. Thanks.

      but it’s not useful information until I also tell you which digit is significant and what the number means.

      You are misunderstanding what informatiob is.

      • @wewbull@feddit.uk
        link
        fedilink
        English
        41 month ago

        I can give you √2 which is 16-bits of information as characters. It’s also an irrational number. How you express something doesn’t change the amount of information is contained in the message.

        • @Snazz@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          31 month ago

          How you express something absolutely does change the amount of information in the message. That’s the foundation of compression.

          Bitmap image files tend to be larger than png files, even when they both represent the same image.

          1.41421… can be thought of as an expanded form of sqrt(2). In this case, the expansion is to an infinite number of digits.

        • @uis@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          31 month ago

          How you express something doesn’t change the amount of information is contained in the message.

          Welcome to the world of entropy coding.