I recently made the startling discovery that when I measure the
circumference of a circle and divide that number by twice the
circle's radius, the value of pi appears! I've been able to confirm
this result to three decimal places so far, using no more than a
simple protractor and a ruler.
This isn't the only "special" number I've encountered. I once
monitored the growth of bacterial cultures in liquid media and found
that the rate of increase in cell counts could be mathematically
manipulated such that the value "e" appeared (But I could only get
about 2 significant figures in this case due to cell adaptation
and nutrient exhaustion).
Most recently, I've converted the letters in my name to ASCII values,
added up the even positions, summed that value with the cube of the
sum of the odd positions and found I could derive the following
relationship:
N = pi * e * K (where K is an irrational constant)
Oddly enough, I can sum the odd positions, add that value to the cube
of the sum of the even positions, and derive an almost identical
relationship:
N2 = pi * e * K2 (where K2 is also a constant, irrational value)
I take this as evidence that the universe was created especially
for me. While it's conceivable the universe was created for someone
else with the same name, I calculated the odds of that happening
as << 1/1E90 (after I factored in left-handedness, locations of
birthmarks, blood type and the ability to recite Monty Python's
"The Lumberjack Song" from memory with > 70% accuracy). Given that
this order of magnitude is greater than the number of protons in
the universe, this alternate option is physically impossible* and
need not be considered further.
Please rest assured that I am a benevolent "center of the universe":
I only ask that people put in a reasonable effort not to disturb my
free-time on weekends. I also look favorably on those who don't take
screaming infants or misbehaving children into decent restaurants
(e.g. anything better than the Waffle house or Perkins) and movie
theaters showing anything but G-rated pictures.
Regards,
Tim Ikeda (tikeda@sprintmail.com)
*Assuming the "multiverse" hypothesis of cosmology is incorrect.
Actually, consideration of explanatory parsimony** conclusively
proves the multiverse concept is impossible.
** Explanatory parsimony is a clever philosophical tool that
permits us to completely ignore explanations that are least
parsimonious, or that appear less parsimonious than an alternate
explanation we may happen to favor at the time. That this tool can
never be proven to operate properly is but a minor point. As rule
of thumb in science, I've personally found that the most
parsimonious explanation, "my lab partner messed up my experiment"
is often incorrect. Instead, the second or third most parsimonious
explanations (e.g #2 - "I screwed up" & #3 - "The results are
actually legitimate") tend to be correct. However, this is not to
detract from the ability to rule out the least parsimonious
explanations like: "Hera, jealous of the god, Zeus, tinkled in
my flask and upset the culture's nitrogen balance", which at
best, may only have happened once with my experiments.
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