Colored Pi

[Chavo]

the point was that you can always find a 'pattern' in anything if you just arrange it right

note that finding one doesn't mean the pattern exists outside of the scope you define it in

[Miamiandy]

Eh, I was hoping to see something in Pi. Who knows maybe the virgin mary would appear and you could copyright that exact method of producing the picture and then sell it on Ebay.

[Sidoh]

Actually, cant you, in this case? I don't believe its possible for computers to generate true random numbers, unless it is provided by some external source.

Right.  It is impossible for computers alone to generate random numbers.  Most algorithms base a result on something like a timestamp.  Even though this is a decent way to generate a "random" number, it's not truely random.  It could, in theory, be predicted.  While pi is random, it is constant.  Since it's impossible to pick a "random" digit in pi, it's chaotic nature doesn't help in the generation of random numbers.  I think there are algorithms that use pi to generate random digits, but it basically just creates a pseudo-prime out of a pseudo-prime -- mixing up the muck, so to speak.  There are random (or at least what we see to be random!) events in nature: some of the properties of light, etc.  There was a promising device that would produce random numbers from particle accelerators and another that anylized data from a neutron star, but they're obviously not practical solutions...

Eh, I was hoping to see something in Pi. Who knows maybe the virgin mary would appear and you could copyright that exact method of producing the picture and then sell it on Ebay.

You mean in the arangements that you saw?  If you mess around for long enough, I bet you'll see it. :p

[dark_drake]

Pi is good.  I, in fact, had a slice of the peanut butter and chocolate variety, and it was delicious.