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I've been searching monographs from Math Reviews all afternoon, hence a random mathy Numb3rs ficlet. Gen, Don and Charlie.
Don stops in the kitchen doorway when he spots Charlie sitting at the dining room table, his chin propped on his hand, scratching out some calculations on paper. Don's last few cases have been straightforward stuff, nothing overtly mathematical--and the end of the fiscal year is getting close, so the office's consulting budget is getting tight, and he can't bring Charlie in as often as he'd like to, not without solid justification. What with one thing and another, he hasn't seen Charlie in nearly two weeks, and from the looks of things, Charlie has gotten bored in his absence. It's July, so classes are at a low ebb, and this is the time of year that always made Charlie antsy, when even math got old and for a few wild hot weeks he was just Don's little brother, riding his bike up and down the block.
Charlie picks something up off the table, raises it and drops it, and Don grins, realizing what Charlie is doing. He shakes his head, and Charlie must spot the motion, because he looks up suddenly, his head coming up so fast Don can see his face transform from an expression of total boredom to delight. Don feels himself grinning even more, because here he is, home with Charlie. His weekend has finally come, only two weeks late, and the house is cool and quiet and familiar. "So, let me get this straight," Don says, walking up to the table, glancing down at the ruled sheet of paper in front of Charlie, with a pin lying between two lines, almost parallel. "Solitaire is boring, but deriving a constant you've got memorized to, like, a million--"
"Six thousand," Charlie says, ducking his head and making a tally mark on his pad of paper.
"Six thousand places, with a pin and a sheet of paper, that just never gets old."
Charlie picks up the pin and drops it again, and this time it lands across a line. "The experiment proves that real events conform to statistical probabilities," he says to the table, making another tally mark before he picks up the pin and rolls it between thumb and forefinger. "I've got pi to ten significant figures here, from the random fall of a pin."
It's not that it isn't cool that you can find pi with a pin; it's just that even Don knows how it works by now, because Charlie's been doing this experiment on and off since he was nine. But--unpredictable as their lives are--it's always good to know the constants hold up in practice as well as in theory. Don moves around to the chair closest to Charlie and sits down, and Charlie looks up at him again, startled, as Don reaches to take the pin from his hand. "So can I help, or will you have to start all over if I contaminate your data?"
Charlie grins. "I think pi can take it."
"Cool," Don says, and drops the pin.
The actual math/science behind Charlie's experiment: Proving Pi and Buffon's Needle
Don stops in the kitchen doorway when he spots Charlie sitting at the dining room table, his chin propped on his hand, scratching out some calculations on paper. Don's last few cases have been straightforward stuff, nothing overtly mathematical--and the end of the fiscal year is getting close, so the office's consulting budget is getting tight, and he can't bring Charlie in as often as he'd like to, not without solid justification. What with one thing and another, he hasn't seen Charlie in nearly two weeks, and from the looks of things, Charlie has gotten bored in his absence. It's July, so classes are at a low ebb, and this is the time of year that always made Charlie antsy, when even math got old and for a few wild hot weeks he was just Don's little brother, riding his bike up and down the block.
Charlie picks something up off the table, raises it and drops it, and Don grins, realizing what Charlie is doing. He shakes his head, and Charlie must spot the motion, because he looks up suddenly, his head coming up so fast Don can see his face transform from an expression of total boredom to delight. Don feels himself grinning even more, because here he is, home with Charlie. His weekend has finally come, only two weeks late, and the house is cool and quiet and familiar. "So, let me get this straight," Don says, walking up to the table, glancing down at the ruled sheet of paper in front of Charlie, with a pin lying between two lines, almost parallel. "Solitaire is boring, but deriving a constant you've got memorized to, like, a million--"
"Six thousand," Charlie says, ducking his head and making a tally mark on his pad of paper.
"Six thousand places, with a pin and a sheet of paper, that just never gets old."
Charlie picks up the pin and drops it again, and this time it lands across a line. "The experiment proves that real events conform to statistical probabilities," he says to the table, making another tally mark before he picks up the pin and rolls it between thumb and forefinger. "I've got pi to ten significant figures here, from the random fall of a pin."
It's not that it isn't cool that you can find pi with a pin; it's just that even Don knows how it works by now, because Charlie's been doing this experiment on and off since he was nine. But--unpredictable as their lives are--it's always good to know the constants hold up in practice as well as in theory. Don moves around to the chair closest to Charlie and sits down, and Charlie looks up at him again, startled, as Don reaches to take the pin from his hand. "So can I help, or will you have to start all over if I contaminate your data?"
Charlie grins. "I think pi can take it."
"Cool," Don says, and drops the pin.
The actual math/science behind Charlie's experiment: Proving Pi and Buffon's Needle