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verzali • today at 12:29 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

I remember discovering that pi x 10^7 is very close to the number of seconds in a year while at uni.

One of my tutors was convinced this had to be more than coincidence, but I always figured it was just chance and a nice but sometimes useful shortcut...

Replies

pansa2 • today at 3:08 PM

I always liked the fact that 10! (10 factorial) is exactly the number of seconds in six weeks.

  6 weeks * 7 days * 24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds:

    6 * 7 * 24 * 60 * 60
  = 6 * 7 * (3 * 8) * (4 * 5 * 3) * (3 * 2 * 10)
  = 6 * 7 * 3 * 8 * 4 * 5 * (3 * 3) * 2 * 10
  = 6 * 7 * 3 * 8 * 4 * 5 * 9 * 2 * 10
  = 1 * 2 * 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 * 7 * 8 * 9 * 10
tzs • today at 1:10 PM

You might be able to send someone down an amusing (to observers) rabbit hole of wrongness by telling them it is not exact because Earth’s orbit is not perfectly circular.

➕ show 2 replies
simondotau • today at 2:49 PM

It cannot be anything but coincidence. While 365.25 days in a year is physics, a day consisting of 86,400 seconds is an entirely arbitrary human construct.

Hnrobert42 • today at 1:36 PM

Get enough numbers, accept wide error bars, and some of them are going to overlap.