Quote:
Originally Posted by yumyumtimtam
1) Can you say the alphabet backwards?
and if yes, how did you learn that? Any song of it? or just memorized it?
|
I could do it, but I'd have to think about it, reversing the order in my head, and I might make a few errors along the way because of that. I've never heard a song of the alphabet backwards, nor have I ever bothered to memorize it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by yumyumtimtam
2) Can any one correct this?
"How many digits of circular constant(pi) can you say?"
"(3.141592653589793238462643383279 )I can say 30 digits"
"say" and "digit" are the right words here?
|
Those words are fine. Personally, I would use "repeat" or "recite" instead of "say", but "say" still works. Other than that, I'd rewrite this only slightly:
"How many digits of the circular constant (pi) can you say?"
"(3.141592653589793238462643383279) I can say 30 digits."
You're talking about a specific, unique circular constant, so you need to use "the". But it would be simpler to say "How many digits of pi ...". To most people, "pi" always means the number, and the context makes it clear that you're talking about a number.
A picky point: always use a space before a left parenthesis "(" and another space after a right parenthesis ")". But that's a rule of typography rather than one of English.
Personally, I only remember the first 6 digits of pi, which is all that you need for most purposes; beyond that I just look it up. Being able to recite 30 digits is a neat trick, but if you think about it, that's a level of accuracy that's incredibly far beyond anything you might ever need. It's roughly one atom's width on a circle
10,000 light years across--nearly the size of a galaxy! So the modern practice of seeing how many digits of pi you can remember (or compute) is done strictly for the mental challenge or for mathematical interest.