Talk:Pi (film)

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Isn't the movie called 'π' not 'Pi'? Shouldn't the title of the page reflect this?

--- π

I don't see nice greek letter for pi. I am using Windows XP and IE6+service pack 1. Do I need install language pack or something? I can see Japanese, Chinese, Korean and most of other's including Arabic ones characters -- Taku 04:19 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

That's very peculiar. I understood the whole point of the HTML coding to be to make it possible for all character sets to see. Do you see: é - an e with an accute accent? - Montréalais

Yes. Oh, maybe fonts? since I am using Arial. Anyway I think this is just my problem on my PC. If anyone else has no problem, it is not a problem. -- Taku 04:31 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

My guess was right. Once I changed the font to Comic Sans MS, I got nice pi letter. -- Taku 04:45 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

The ampersand is getting changed to &, so the title of the page becomes an ugly π. I wonder if we can escape the unruly character. --Goblin 05:57, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

It seems it can't be done. The page for π redirects to Pi, so I guess the movie article should be redirected to Pi (movie). --Goblin 06:01, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

Due to UTF-8 support, the old [[π]] redirect is no longer accessible; attemps to link to it (see example in comment directly above) go to [[Π]] instead (due to Wiki upper-casing-first-letter rules), and that is linked to Pi (letter). Noel (talk) 15:58, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I thought this used to work. I guess not. Anyway, I can't tell my true story/joke in the article space so I'll tell it here. My friend calls up Blockbuster to see if they have π in stock. The girl who answers the phone asks him how to spell π and he responds "pi". anthony 警告 18:29, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Now that we have UTF-8 support, it would be possible to move this page to π (movie) if y'all want. Noel (talk) 15:58, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Pi (film) was much better. Things are now needlessly complicated—renaming it to the greek letter hasn't made the article name truer to the real film title because of WikiMedia's automatic capitalization. We now have to put up a complicated notice clarifying that it's π and not Π. I think the article name should be put back to Pi (film), then simply state "Pi or π is a film..." instead of using Template:wrongtitle at all. —jiy (talk) 16:02, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

I, agreeing with jiy, moved the page back to Pi (film). I feel that this is the best solution at this time. If/when we become able to have titles start with lowercase letters, Greek or otherwise, move it back to π (film), and only then. I have never seen the numerical constant "3.14159265..." represented by Π (uppercase "pi"). — FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 08:12, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 maxwell 2 Correction to one of the trivia items 3 Trivia 4 Dan Winter? 5 On trivia in the movie Pi 6 Mathematical goofs? 7 plot 8 Weasel Words with Go Removed 9 Exodus 14: 19-21 10 ants! 11 nothing was real? 12 Irony?

[edit] maxwell

i deleted the following text: "is much in the tradition of James Clerk Maxwell, whose equations unified the description of electricity and magnetism, in the process predicting that light is an electromagnetic wave." I disagree with the claim that unification of magnetism and electricity is in any way similar in spirit to the study of patterns in nonlinear dynamics. the latter sounds much more like chaos theory to me. Lethe

[edit] Correction to one of the trivia items

The trivia section has a tidbit referring to Sol's fish, Icarus, and states that Sol's name is a reference to the son. However, I am pretty sure that Sol is short for Solomon, a Hebrew name. 158.106.50.3 16:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

Does anyone think there should be trivia on the movie here? There are a few little funfacts that can be found. For instance, listen to the little girl make up numbers to have Max calculate. Some of them are most likely referenced off of important numbers in mathematics. The final question she asks him is about 748 divided by 238 which is approximately 3.14, or a rounded off definition of pi.

[edit] Dan Winter?

Is it possible that somebody may add to this article a brief reference and link to Daniel Winter, who was surely the basis of some of Max Cohen's character? If you are unsure about the reference, Dan Winter was responsible for his interesting theory on the developement of the origins of the hebrew flame "aleph bet" and was subsequently harassed and sued by Stanley N. Tenen. Much more information is found online that goes into his research using the golden mean (also used in Pi, the movie), books on his theories/findings on said subject, and his fleeing America due to court costs from the aforementioned legal battle. Much of the information on his findings and beliefs, originally deriving from his site www.danwinter.com, are no longer available as the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered it shut down due to his being wanted. Some further information is available at http://spirals.eternite.com/ Once again, I do not mean to suggest this movie is based off of him per se, but it seems quite evident it is heavily influenced on many of his findings.

[edit] On trivia in the movie Pi

Regarding the 748 divided by 238 part of the movie, I don't think that should be included since there is a 3 digit fraction which approximates pi a lot better (i.e. 355 divided by 113). If the director was trying to get a small fraction that approximates pi, he did a poor job since this fraction is well known. This fraction could be obtained very quickly using continued fractions. Or one could simply take the naive approach and have the computer iteratively print out pi * 2, pi * 3, ... up to pi * 1000 and see which ones are close to an integer.

Perhaps some people here who have seen the movie would be interested to know that the 216 digit number in the movie is:

941432434315126593210548723 904868285129134748760276719 592346023858295830472501652 325259296925727655364363462 929184012012643147546329450 127847264841075622347896267 285928582953475027722626464 56217613984829519475412398501

Aren't those 218 digits?

I haven't played with this number so I don't know if the writer of the film actually got it from anywhere (could be part of the Fibonacci sequence or just a number the writer picked randomly). I would advise anyone looking into this to have plenty of headache medication on hand.

Also, since the movie is dealing with biblical references, the Number of the Beast is 666, and 6 * 6 * 6 = 216 -- I'm pretty sure that was done on purpose.--SQB

616 is the number of the beast, not 666

[edit] Mathematical goofs?

When the movie "claim[s] that the kabbalists could recite the phonetic equivalents of all 216-digit numbers in only two thousand years" it is Max doing the claiming. I think Max was trying to make a point that they "lost" the number because they had lost the meaning, the value. I'm also going to add the goof about the hebrew number system.

[edit] plot

Spoiler warning ? they nothing of his quest and his results...His drill through the head etc.. Can anyone complete this ? The Procrastinator 01:50, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Weasel Words with Go Removed

As per Wikipedia's guide on weasel words, I replaced the phrase "yet many consider [Go] more challenging than chess" with "[Go] features a very simple set of rules that results in an extremely complex game strategy." I doubt that 'many' would even know what Go is.  :( While it is easy to show that Go is more complex than Chess in several regards, a digression into Go's complexity does not seem warranted for this article. Lets leave that discussion for the Go page.

--Dasunt 21:31, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Exodus 14: 19-21

I checked the verses (Today's English Version) and could find nothing about the Seschamphorus. Can we add an explanation, a quotation of the verses, or somply delete it?

The three verses are used in the following algorithm: The 216 Letter Name of God is the composition of three verses of 72 letters each in Exodus. The Name composes into 72 triplets by taking the first letter of the first verse, the last letter of the second verse, and the first letter of third verse. The next triplet consists of the second letter of the first verse, the second to last letter of the second verse and the second letter of the third verse. We proceed this way until we form all 72 triplets. (From one of the many descriptions found on the web.) Jclerman 01:18, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ants!

Max sees ants. In the korean movie "Oldboy", the theory is presented that when people are sufficiently lonley they start seeing ants (perhaps because ants work together). I wonder if there are other movies (or studies) in which this motive appears... -Ados 02:56, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] nothing was real?

i watched this recently and noticed something peculiar. remember the part where he grabs the newspaper from the old man and the stock predictions were correct? well it's the same old man that disappears throughout the movie. so maybe the old man isn't real? the newspaper isn't real? the predictions aren't real? nothing in the movie actually occurs? just a thought, though i'm fairly convinced that was done intentionally. --P3on 17:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Irony?

The long decimal expansion of π at the beginning of the film is in fact incorrect:

3.1415926535897... (actual digits)

3.1415926526312... (film)

Deliberate mistake on the part of the film-makers? 82.12.105.46 23:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)