Math

Here is a fact that should be more unsettling than it is: nothing we build rests on exact numbers. Pi is irrational — it goes on forever, never repeating, never resolving into a fraction that says this, exactly this. And yet pipes carry water, wheels turn on axles, orbits get calculated to the meter across millions of kilometers. Not because anyone knows what pi is, exactly, but because 3.14159265 is close enough. The bridge doesn’t need the infinite decimal. It needs the first six digits and a safety margin. ...