Mary,
You can live a good life in Guatemala City. You can find everything you need or want. It does help to know where to look, though, since quality standards are inconsistent. If you want to find anything that you'd get at Super Target, go to Hiper Pais. For American-style shopping malls, go to La Pradera, Los Proceres, or Tikal Futura. I happen to be a wine and cheese enthusiast; I found everything I wanted at the Gourmet Center. For English-language books and a nice cafe to relax in, go to Sophos (you must try the most delicious drink in the world, Chocolate con Café).
There are great restaurants in Guatemala City and Antigua (http://www.eveandersson.com/guatemala/restaurants and http://www.eveandersson.com/guatemala/restaurants-antigua). Tamarindos, in Guatemala City, is one of the best restaurants I've experienced in any country. Jean François (Guatemala City) and Mesón Panza Verde (Antigua) are also up there on the list.
Cable television will give you many English-language channels. Movies in theatres are almost always in English (with Spanish subtitles).
There are great apartments to live in, with good security and all the modern conveniences. Many foreigners live in Zone 10.
If I were you, I would study Spanish in Antigua for a couple months. While some people in Guatemala City (and especially Antigua) speak English, life will be so much easier if you know the basics of Spanish. Besides, it's fun to study in Antigua. I studied at Proyecto Lingüistico Francisco Marroquin (http://www.langlink.com/plfm/), which has a very high quality program.
Probably the most important advice I can give you is to join Yoda, the Young Diplomats Association in Guatemala (http://www.yoda-guatemala.com/). This is really just a club for foreigners living in Guatemala; many members are not young nor are they diplomats. They get together regularly for dinner at Guatemala City restaurants; it's a great way to make friends and get advice.
Guatemala really is an extraordinary country, and I hope that you will take advantage of your 2-3 years there. See the Mayan ruins, visit the gorgeous countryside, and spend as much time as you can relaxing in the cool breeze of a courtyard café.
-- (March 30, 2005) on Guatemala
Chris,Your statement, "However, because there is no repeating pattern in the decimal portion of Pi we can assume that all numbers are equally likely to be the next number in the sequence ..." isn't actually correct.
Here is a counterexample. Take the number 1.01001000100001000001... It has no repeating pattern, yet not all digits are equally likely.
It has been conjectured that pi is "normal" which, mathematically speaking, means that all digits are equally likely and that other properties of randomness are adhered to. However, this has yet to be proven.
-- (September 27, 2004) on Frequency of Each Digit of Pi
I know a number of people with MBAs who have very high standards of personal integrity.My only point about MBAs in this article is that having this degree doesn't necessarily make one more adept at running a business than those who have spent years in the industry.
The key word in that sentence is "necessarily"; some people do make big assumptions about a person's talents or integrity based on the educational path they have taken. I have great respect for my friends and colleagues regardless of what degrees they have -- MBA or otherwise.
-- (April 7, 2004) on Diary of a Startup
It's interesting that the volume of a 4-dimensional sphere is (1/2)Pi2r4 because Pi2 occurs so infrequently in geometric formulas.
One place it does occur is in number theory. Two integers are considered relatively prime if they share no common divisors (other than 1). It turns out that the probability that two positive integers are relatively prime is 6/Pi2.
I wonder if there is a geometric interpretation of relatively prime?
-- (March 12, 2004) on Pi
I've written a Postscript to this story.
-- (July 15, 2003) on Diary of a Startup