[VA] SRC #016 - Pi Day 2024 Special

[johnb]

(03-14-2024 06:20 PM)Valentin Albillo Wrote:  First of all:  what do I consider a rare \(\pi\) appearance ? Well, broadly speaking mostly any unexpected appearances of \(\pi\) having nothing to do with circles or other geometric matters (including arc lengths, areas, volumes, etc.,) ...

LOL! Here's another unexpected appearance of \(\pi\) ...

Back in the 1990's, I worked in the development department of a major Enterprise Resource Planning software firm. The organization was fairly flat so that I and most of my peers reported directly to the VP for new systems, and we self-managed. One day I was in his office talking with him about how he interfaced to upper management, and he informed me that over several years of empirical data gathering, he'd discovered most software engineers' estimates were off by a factor of somewhere between 3.1 and 3.15. He had no explanation for the cause of this value being so bizarrely close to \(\pi\), but he said "what works, works, so I multiply all my subordinates' estimates by pi before submitting them outside my organization, and it's never let me down so far."

So...

Apparently, the minds of most software engineers have something circular in their reasoning?