American Pi

Today is 14 March which, in American notation, is written 3/14. If you have a certain type of mind you will immediately notice that these digits bear a close approximation to one of the most important numbers in mathematics - pi.

Today has therefore been declared World Pi Day in honour of the mathematical constant that has beguiled and bewildered successive generations of numerate scholars since the days of ancient Babylon.

Every schoolchild is told pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. In other words, divide the distance around the edge of a circle by its diameter and you always get the same or "constant" number - pi.

It's a nice bit of trigonometry that we learn by gradual osmosis and forget by rapid diffusion. Yet its simple truth has provided mathematicians - ancient and modern - with a cornucopia of conundrums.

The first and most interesting is working out the precise value of pi. That has proved something of a challenge since the decimal places of pi can theoretically run on for ever. For the benefit of this short history of pi we can say that the value of the constant is 3.1416. A purist would of course argue that this is a gross estimation, preferring the more precise 3.14159265358979323846. Ultra-orthodox purists would add a few thousand more digits, but even they wouldn't be quite right.

A supercomputer in Tokyo once calculated pi to more than 2 billion digits. It could not, however, reach the final decimal place because as every mathematician knows, that lies somewhere beyond infinity, a place they go only in their dreams.

It was Archimedes who is credited as being the first to elevate the calculation of pi to a more theoretical discipline. It is for that reason the number is sometimes known as Archimedes' constant.

It was not until 1706 that someone gave it the name we know it by today. If William Jones, a Welsh mathematician, is remembered for one thing it is his suggestion to call Archimedes's constant "pi" after the Greek letter.

Extracts from the Independent

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Wake up to the future

Denmark was the first country in the world to make public services available online - and is now going a step further - forcing its citizens online. Since the beginning of February, for instance, companies dealing with state institutions must submit their invoices electronically.

Around 15 million transactions that the state previously handled in paper are now managed electronically - with huge benefits.

"We have made savings in the public sector of around 100m euros (£68.5m)," says Claus Juhl, from the government's Digital Task Force. "That is a big saving in a country of only five million people. There's a lot of talk about gaining efficiency via e-solutions, but we wanted more than talk."

Despite opposition, the arguments for forcing people online are gaining ground - and not just in Denmark. The e-invoicing project was given an award for innovation by the European Union, and many other countries are watching the Danish experience closely. Extract from the BBC

In the days of mainframes, there was nothing firms could do but have their staff sat at their desk using centrally held programs.

The advent of personal computers revolutionised office work and introduced some freedom into the way firms operated - though workers largely had to sit at a desk to use the software loaded on the machine in front of them. Wi-fi everywhere takes this freedom to its ultimate endpoint.

No longer do workers have to sit at a desk to get at the programs they need to do their job. Any computer in any place will do as long as it can get access to the net. Every program they use is always available and is maintained by someone else. In this scenario, software becomes a service that people use rather than something they install. The computer is no longer important. It is all about what you are doing with it.

“We're still in a 19th Century world which sees the means of production as bolted to the floor and you had to sit in front of it," said Richard Hall, chief technology officer at hi-tech integrator Avanade.

"Wi-fi everywhere will mean staff not having to commute unless they want or need to," said Chris Boorman, vice president of marketing for Salesforce.com. "It lets staff work where they need or want to. That's going to be a huge shift in the fabric of society." Extract from the BBC

Successive governments have absorbed more than 60 billion euros in EU funds over the last 20 years, with most of the money going into infrastructure projects at the expense of more innovative investments.

A large chunk of the funds - which Greece received between 1986 to 2006 - went to transportation projects, bypassing areas such as training, education and human resources.

A number of transport projects still remain half-finished while the government has failed to implement a quality measurement system on the projects completed. Extract from Kathimerini

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Dirty weekend

The government yesterday unveiled plans to raise about 1.6 billion euros from the sale of state-owned assets in 2006. Money from the sales is intended to help Greece reduce its massive public debt, now the largest in the European Union.

A work stoppage by unionists brought much of Athens to a standstill yesterday as the ruling conservatives sought to adopt a more worker-friendly approach in labour relations.

A medical centre operating in Athens’s Olympic Village has received 3,500 visits from local residents in about six months despite the accommodation area being only marginally used.

Authorities uncovered 7.2 million illegal firecrackers in a warehouse in Yiannitsa, northern Greece.

Concerns over avian flu are culminating throughout Europe, as the H5N1 virus was detected in a dead cat in Germany.

And it looks like a dirty weekend ahead of Clean Monday: a blanket of sand from the Sahara Desert is likely to cover Greece today and again on Monday.

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