The Pi Trivia Game

by Eve Andersson

Home : Pi : The Pi Trivia Game

Finally this is your chance to pay tribute to the magnificent transcendental number that we have all grown to love! Here are 25 questions (given to you 5 at a time), picked randomly from my pi question database. Get ready for the thrill of your lifetime, the ultimate challenge, The Pi Trivia Game!

1. Pi is ubiquitous in the branch of mathematics known as statistics. The maximum height of what famous curve is equal to 1/sqrt(2*pi)?
a sine curve
the bell (Gaussian) curve for a standard normal distribution
the step function y = int(x) between x=-17 and x=0
the Sarstedt curve
Euler's population density curve

2. Answer the following question (an example of pi's importance in probability), posed and solved by George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (solved also nowdays by many students in introductory statistics classes): Let a needle of length L be thrown at random onto a horizontal plane ruled with parallel lines spaced by a distance d (greater than L) from each other. What is the probability that the needle will intersect one of these lines?
pi*d^2
pi*d*L
3d/(pi*L)^2
2L/(d*pi)
e^(pi*i*d*L)

3. If one were to find the circumference of a circle the size of the known universe, requiring that the circumference be accurate to within the radius of one proton, how many decimal places of pi would need to be used?
2 million
39
11
48,000
300

4. What is the value of e^(i*pi)?
the square root of -1
approximately 10
pi squared
-1
1.414

5. For a given value of N: if you add up the first N decimals of pi (excluding the initial 3), the sum is 666 (not to imply that pi is at all satanic). What is the value of N?
144
169
148
123
121
eve@eveandersson.com