I just found a very interesting webpage about pi. It is based on the, pi is normal, conjecture. That is to the never ending sequence of digits that make up pi behave statistically as a list of random numbers. If we then convert the digits of pi into letters (in base 26) then the the monkeys banging away on a typewriter forever scenario is realised and any sequence of letters will eventually be met if we search through the digits of pi! The author of the page has been so kind as to work out how far one has to go through the list to find words of length N. The results are:
N #digits
– ——-
2 4
3 13
4 81
5 1000
6 14800
7 272000
8 5.7 Million
9 140 M
10 3900 M
Very interesting I think! The first 6 letter word found is Oxygen! Now there is a cool fact for you!!
The full page is to be found here and contains much more pi-related discussions!
Evan
