Not a chance its only chance.

As of the 23rd May 2022 this website is archived and will receive no further updates.

understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

Many of the animations were produced using Flash and will no longer work.

A 9 years old girl in 1941 has written each of the times tables up to 10 on her Golden Rod tablet. She did that because she has to memorize them. Her dad, (with the best of intentions) insists she has to recite the multiplication tables through 10 before she can eat dinner. Its been a long trek and she hasn't succeeded yet. Each night her sisters and brother giggle while she haltingly begins; 1 x 1 = 1; 1 x 2 = 2; etc., attempting to get through to 10 x 10 = 100. Her dinner is delayed every evening. Looking at the paper a thought occurs into her mind: "Add the double numbers in each product, across." She seems to know what that means, 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16, 18, 20 becomes 2,4,6,8,1,3,5,7,9,2... The table of 3's: 3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24, 27 30 becomes 3,6,9,3,6,9,3,6,9,3... She sees that each times table has a hidden pattern that repeats and the table of 9's is extremely easy because each product sums to 9! But at a certain point right in the middle: 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90 the numbers twist around, 45 becomes 54, the numbers repeat but are reversed. That's nice, she thinks. Fast forwards about 50+ experience filled years to 1989 and the same female is reading The History of Pi by Petr Beckmann. She's reading it because her employer used the pi symbol as their awards logo, along with PIE, Pride In Excellence and she just happened to notice the book while browsing in the library. A very nice model of the pi symbol stands inside the security gates and she has become an ardent challenge level square dancer by then, a fact which may seem irrelevant but its not. She has just read about the problem of 'squaring the circle/quadrature of the circle' for the first time in her life, realizing it was so easy to 'square the circle' in the challenge levels of square-dance that she and a few others she knows are so addicted to. The caller just chants, 'circle that square', or 'square the circle' and its done. With her specific history of experiences in her minds data base, she turns to the back of the book. After reading the copyright statement, which is an unusual thing for her to do, it says '10,000 of 100, 265 of pi's decimals' are on the last two pages.. She wonders briefly why 100, 265 was not rounded off, to 100, 250 , why 265? That is not typical for her. Then she turns to the first page and immediately sees 265 in the first line, 3.14159265358... and also notices the Fibonacci numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8 which she's just read about in the book. Then suddenly a kind of mental slide show in which 14, 15, 92 are cross summed reveals 3, 5 6 2 653.The first 6 decimals cross summed are now the same as the last 5 decimals, marked off by the Fibonacci sequence: 356 2 356! She notices that the city where Petr Beckmann lives is on the back of the book, so she calls information and is given his number. He answers the phone. She wants permission to use the two pages of decimals to make a T-shirt and he gives it. But he's got cancer and he wants to talk about that, not pi or its decimals or its history or his book. She listens for some time. She creates the T-shirt and sends him one but by then his life was ended, his wife tells her. But wait, there's a lot more...
Total votes: 295
Date submitted:Fri, 22 Aug 2014 19:51:55 +0000Coincidence ID:7725