Firstly, you do realise that I'm not the author, I just submitted it, don't you?
Secondly, there are some curious things about pi. It does turn up in places that apparently have nothing to do with circles. It's a bit like e in that regard.
Next, we don't have to assume it's "magical," but some of the properties are noteworthy. The fact that 355/113 is such a good approximation, and yet it doesn't appear to turn up naturally in any of the proven convergences is a bit odd. Why does it not turn up? The only place it does turn up is when you write down the ad hoc continued fraction to express the value you already know. That seems unnatural, and immediately leads to a desire for further investigation.
And finally, mathematicians have a feel for things that are "natural," and that's what they end up exploring. Often it leads nowhere interesting, but sometimes it leads to unexpected connections, and occasionally to equally unexpected applications. But in all, some questions just feel right for exploration, and some properties of pi fall into that category. You never really know exactly what will advance math - we only have intuition to guide us in deciding what is an "interesting question."
Agreed. I understand there's a hacker mentality here, but who would really pass up the CEO at an established behemoth like Yahoo to take the reigns of an unproven (or found) startup?
Me. I'm not qualified to be the CEO of Yahoo, so I would only be setting myself up for failure if I took the job. But running a smaller company limits the amount of harm I can do to myself and others while I learn the ropes.
The only reason to expect Mayer to do well as the CEO of Yahoo would be if her work at Google were similar to that job in some respect. I'm not sure it is.
Just an FYI, I find the copy on your homepage to be a /bit/ confusing:
"We hire the best software developers in our community who are bored in their current jobs. We put them to work in partnerships with established businesses to co-create new product based businesses."
You really think it's feasible for a 2 year old to have an idea how a transistor works when all they want to do is watch videos of kitties and puppies on YouTube?
I believe ww2 was facetiously pointing out that the father in this piece chose to introduce his kids to an arbitrary point in the abstraction chain under the premise that anything higher is hiding too much of the implementation.
That said, while you could try and have your 2 year old build ENIAC out of from-scratch vacuum tubes I doubt you'll have much luck - I'm pretty surprised at the degree of success the author had with text terminals at that age, to be honest. As the father of a nearly-2-year-old this definitely has my gears turning...
I think it is likely a pretty solid idea to not teach kids how digital circuits and whatnot work, but rather to tell them. Make them aware that the knowledge of how they work is out there. Humans have a tendency to fill in gaps in their knowledge with superstition, though even the most basic of naturalistic frameworks should be sufficient to keep that tendency under control.
