[Python-ideas] Python Numbers as Human Concept Decimal System

[Mark H. Harris]

On Saturday, March 8, 2014 4:27:25 PM UTC-6, Andrew Barnert wrote:
>
> {snip}


Many folks "play" on the interactive python terminal;  and some python 
experienced users
and developers forget this. For instance the QPython people did not provide 
a terminal 
or interactive python with their first release because they were focused on 
their product 
being a script reader and forgot that normal people experiment on the 
interactive console, for 
calculation, and other things.   We had a discussion the other night about 
the decimal distribution
(numerical digit distribution) of the digits 0-9 in the number PI. The 
conjecture is that as the 
number of digits increased the distribution evens out, and PI is for all 
intents and purposes 
a random number generator (for large numbers of digits).  But what does it 
look like to users
who have never seen it, and how hard is it to code up?   Well, its two 
lines of python code, 
and inexperienced users can not believe that:  below:

>>> ================================ RESTART 
================================
>>> from pdeclib import *
>>> dscale(1010)
42
>>> pi=get_PI()
>>> sPI=repr(pi)[:1002]
>>> 
>>> for n in range(10):
print(n, sPI.count(str(n)))

0 92
1 114
2 102
3 103
4 92
5 97
6 93
7 95
8 100
9 104
 
Well, there it is; the distribution of the digits of PI in the first 1002, 
precisely;  all from the console.

marcus
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