Replies to post #14560 on Biotech Values

[io_io]

'e'

I have a "clinical trial" story about 'e'.

When I first got a PC, it was one of the old Apples, perhaps the original Mac, or was there a "2e" model ?

Anyway, I wrote a program in Basic (or that other language with "Go To ...." etc), that simulated the question:

If I have a field of parallel lines, exactly 1 unit length apart, and I drop a "spinning" rod (=line segment, which lands at a random angle to the lines) measuring exactly 1 unit long, what is the probability of either an Overlap (=hit) result, or a complete Miss ?

The program used to run this say 10,000 times, using the Mac's random-number function as part of the program, and sure enough, the answer iterated perfectly to something like "1-1/e" as probability (of a Miss I think).

The point was that, even if the world never knew what a circle was, certain numbers like 'e' would turn up anyway.

This probably explains why PI showed up in an apparently "non-circular" event - the issuing of GOOG's shares (although I guess GOOG has more circles in there than most - symbol, valuation, etc)............ No ?

[io_io]

GOOG / Dew

Dew .... by complete coincidence, I had not known this before, but just reading my Time magazine ... in addition to the pi story, apparently GOOG had said last year it was planning in it's IPO to raise:

$2,718,281,828

(...= shades of 'e')

Obviously the CFO did some serious Math, not just Accounting.