They’re probably the only things that “create” information in the sense that you can always grab another slice. Thank you delicious pi!

  • RandomVideos@programming.dev
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    7 hours ago

    According to your reasoning, the Fibonacci numbers, or repeatedly applying a math operation to a number are infinite sources of information

    • josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
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      7 hours ago

      Nah I replied to someone else with a similar thought. The Notorious Fibs sure I agree with you they are new information, similar to the primes but just adding +1 over an over again or even some repeating pattern doesn’t add new information beyond the initial pattern.

  • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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    13 hours ago

    Is it actually information? I can give you the number two, but it’s not useful information until I also tell you which digit is significant and what the number means. Communicating information is still limited by the speed of light.

    • radix@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      From one of my favorite college professors: apparently in the Chevy Chase days of Saturday Night Live he would do the Weekend Update and had a recurring bit that went like this.

      And now it’s time for the basketball scores. 98-82; 102-99; 95-76.


      That’s data. Without context there’s no useful information.

    • uis@lemm.ee
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      8 hours ago

      Is it actually information?

      Yes. For every bit of number pi you get one bit of information.

      I can give you the number two

      You gave me log2(10) bits of information. Thanks.

      but it’s not useful information until I also tell you which digit is significant and what the number means.

      You are misunderstanding what informatiob is.

      • wewbull@feddit.uk
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        6 hours ago

        I can give you √2 which is 16-bits of information as characters. It’s also an irrational number. How you express something doesn’t change the amount of information is contained in the message.

        • Snazz@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          How you express something absolutely does change the amount of information in the message. That’s the foundation of compression.

          Bitmap image files tend to be larger than png files, even when they both represent the same image.

          1.41421… can be thought of as an expanded form of sqrt(2). In this case, the expansion is to an infinite number of digits.

    • Gork@lemm.ee
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      11 hours ago

      Situationally, yes. “I want the next digit of pi” is information in that sense of the word. It’s not a particularly useful piece of information unless you’re building something that requires a circle with a circumferential precision larger than the width of our entire universe.

      • josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
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        7 hours ago

        How many digits of Pi would you have to read for you to be able to reconstruct all of the information in the Universe up to this moment?

    • Deebster@infosec.pub
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      12 hours ago

      I don’t see why not, it’s just numbers, which is all we store most data as.

      You could use it as a source of pseudorandom numbers to encrypt an infinite data steam, e.g. we’ll encrypt using e, starting at position 40468.

        • uis@lemm.ee
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          7 hours ago

          It is not. If I in July in Europe will say “there is no snow outside”, I give you very little information. If in same conditions I will say “there is snow outside”, I will give a lot of information.

          Amount of information is proportional to (logarithm of) improbability of outcome.

  • discimus@mander.xyz
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    14 hours ago

    Any infinite group applies to this too. The group of integers, real numbers, etc. are infinite. Just add 1 👍

    • josephmbasile@lemmy.worldOP
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      7 hours ago

      True although I would like to note that the digits of Pi are the heart of r-n jesus and the number line just does boring stuff like steadily increasing forever.