co-written with Donna Devine, she says: The famous mnemonic for approximating the digits of Pi is: "May I have a large container of coffee?" Counting the letters in each word gives the sequence 3,1,4,1,5,9,2,6.
Just to refresh your memories: Pi is the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet. It's also a mathematical constant. It allows you to find the circumference of a circle if you know the radius or diameter, or the radius and diameter if you only know the circumference. The Greek form of Pi is used in mathematics and scientific settings. Johan Lambert, a German mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, studied Pi in 1770. He proved it was an irrational number.
(Being dyscalculic, I consider ALL numbers to be irrational! ;) )
I say: By the way, verse two really got my inner pedant wondering, so i looked up Johann Heinrich Lambert's biography:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_Lambert
seds.org/~spider/spider/Misc/lambert.html
It seems that he didn't ever have a wife or kids, but he did indeed do a fair bit more than just calculate Pi. Also, he was Swiss, not German, though he spent most of his life in Germany. :-)
from
Honesty And Thorns,
track released January 8, 2010
words: Donna Devine, music: Calum Carlyle