Quick question. What mathematical constants would you say are worth memorising?

@Nyoei I'm not sure there is much need to memorize any of them. More useful understanding how to apply them.

@freemo I suppose it's more of a 'Which ones should I learn to recognise on sight?' because I see a lot of wibbly symbols and I can never tell if they mean something profound or if they are just plugins.

@Nyoei The most commonly used ones you really need to know would be the following:

π (pi)
e (euler's number)
i (imaginary number)
and to a lesser extent φ (phi, golden ration)

Now if you want to include physics and not just pure math the list of essential constants is quite large.

As a side note while √2 is a very important number and worth exploring it isny usually represented as a constant in terms of notation. It is however called pathgoras' constant.

@freemo I love the Golden Ratio. I have whole books about it. Still haven't mastered it mind you... e i and pi have something to do with Eulers Identity but I haven't learned about that yet 😬

@Nyoei Eulers identity is cool and all but not the best way to understand those constants.

@freemo I figured it wouldn't be. I am looking up the individual constants now. At least I memorised Pi to a reasonable level long time ago when I had a teacher who told me it would be fine to know it to 3sf. I disagreed violently with his assessment. I'd still like to understand more about it when I have the time. They should have maths philosophers in the world for people to talk to:D

@Nyoei Well there is absolutely no advantage to memorizing digits other than practice i memorizing stuff. Just memorize a fractional approximation.

22/7 is off from pi by only ~1/791

If that isnt accurate eough then 355/113 approximates pi within ~1/3000000

Both of these are far more accurate than any digits you could memorize.