标题: 庆祝Pi节日，MIT于3/14/15 9:26 发榜今年录取结果(英文) [打印本页] 作者: dqtp 时间: 2015-3-14 08:19 标题: 庆祝Pi节日，MIT于3/14/15 9:26 发榜今年录取结果(英文) By Adam Vaccaro
Boston.com Staff | 03.13.15 | 1:51 PM
For a mid-morning minute on Saturday, it will be 9:26 a.m. on March 14, 2015. Another way of presenting that is 3/14/15, 9:26, which looks an awful lot like 3.1415926. Pi Day—March 14—is one thing, but Saturday morning represents a twice-in-a-century occasion (it will happen 12 hours later, too) for pi enthusiasts. Yes, it’s a special Pi Day moment, extending for eight of the mathematical constant’s infinite digits.
It figures to be a big moment for prospective students, too. At that time, in honor of pi, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will issue its admissions decisions online.
MIT has given applicants their decisions on Pi Day for the last several years. The date conveniently falls in mid-March, which is acceptance season after all, and it has a certain kind of resonance for the math minds that MIT peddles.
Since at least 2012, however, it has issued the decision at 6:28 p.m.
That timing is a numerical nod as well, this time to the concept of “tau.” What’s tau? It’s two-times-pi, a number whose first eight digits work out to 6.2831853, and it’s taken the math world by storm in recent years. Tau types think pi is borderline useless. A chief complaint of theirs is that most equations that use pi involve multiplying it by two in the first place. Scientific American, citing a noted pi believer who since converted to tau, said last year that “thinking in terms of pi is like reaching your destination and saying you’re twice halfway there.”
It may not be blue dress vs. white dress, but pi vs. tau has grown into a sizable debate in math circles. By issuing admissions decisions on 3/14, at 6:28, MIT has been able to appease both sides. But the allure of capitalizing on eight uninterrupted digits of pi appears to have been too hard to resist for the school.
So is tau getting the shaft? Does MIT have anything planned for 6:28—a.m. or p.m.—on Saturday? Not in the admissions office, said MIT spokesperson Andrew Carleen. “I can’t find any events listed at MIT either,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that there is nothing going on on campus at that time but there doesn’t appear to be anything posted.”
Let’s hope the school makes it up to tau in 16 years. The official Tau Day website is already counting down the days. “Congratulations to pi (half tau) on its big day!” reads a header on the site. “Tau will have its revenge on June 28, 2031.” At 8:53, to be exact.
