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Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

Or just use digits of pi; most people have at least 10 digits memorized, some have 20+ memorized. There's also a formula you can memorize for calculating the nth digit of pi, so you have infinite random numbers without memorizing an esoteric algorithm with a bazillion corner cases.

That said, I still thought this was an interesting article and I loved the animated bar graphs.

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Most people have at least 10 digits memorized? That is one bold claim

I meant here on Hacker News. I would guess most of us here played with our TI-83s enough to know the first 10

I wonder how many people on HN have even seen a TI-83, I don’t think I’ve seen one since I sold mine when I finished the Danish equivalent of high school in 99. I mean, they were apparently discontinued in 2004, that’s 15 years ago.

I'm from the US and graduated high school in 2014; TI-83s were ubiquitous. I'm not sure if they were the original model or the "plus," though.

Probably the plus. The TI-84 Plus was the calculator my high school (and maybe middle school) offered - I graduated in 2016.

In the US TI has established a multi-decade monopoly in schools. Basically, the teachers are only familiar with specifically them, so they require student only use them, so new teachers are only familiar with them.

As a result, a new TI-85 equivalent is only trivially upgraded from what I used 25 years ago and costs exactly as much minus inflation.

Wow, why aren’t students using laptops?

In college some students use laptops for taking notes. Not so much in high school. But in both during tests, electronics are strictly regulated to prevent cheating. Teachers know how to factory reset TI calculators. So, they and only they are allowed. Also, teachers know how to instruct how to use TI calculators. So, they are sometimes even required for certain classes.

Lol in Germany i was only ever allowed to use non-programmable calculators all the way through high school, college, university.

I'm not sure that most people have memorized the first 10 digits of Pi. I know 3 for certain, any more than that and I can look them up.

I think most would know the first 5 because it's pretty accurate making 3.14159 into 3.1416 and you forget what's after the 9

3.14159 might even be a stretch though. I'm pretty sure the average person (or american at least) would only know 3.14

That is pretty arrogant to think that just because somebody posts here they have 10 digits of pi memorized. This is a public forum. Anybody can post. You and everybody else posting here are in all likelihood just average intelligence.

There is nothing exclusive about using this forum. You aren’t the first or the last random person to exist here.

Don’t let your own supposition of your intelligence get to your head. There is even a theory for that.... Dunning Kruger.

Memorizing digits of pi is easier than memorizing the algorithm in the article. 3.14159265, come on, stop making such a big deal of this.

I count only nine digits so it looks like you gatekept yourself out.

It's still an unsolved problem whether or not the digits of pi are uniformly distributed.

Just try it out for yourself. Analyze the distribution of the first billion digits and I think you'll find they will produce a more uniform distribution than this algorithm in the article given 1 billion human responses...

Even taking for granted that the digits are evenly distributed, which digit do you pick?

The next one in the sequence, anytime you need a new number?

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