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MrLeaptoday at 1:20 AM1 replyview on HN

You could express the offset with scientific notation, tetration, and other big math number things. You probably don't need the whole offset number all at once!


Replies

GuB-42today at 2:19 AM

Actually, you do.

You can use all the math stuff like scientific notation, tetration, etc... but it won't help you make things smaller.

Math notation is a form of compression. 10^9 is 1000000000, compressed. But the offset into pi is effectively a random number, and you can't compress random numbers no matter what technique you use, including math notation.

This can be formalized and mathematically proven. The only thing wrong here is that pi is not a random number, but unless you are dealing with circles, it looks a lot like it, so while unproven, I think it is a reasonable shortcut.