The Irrational Perfume

Most people seem annoyed by spam. Personally my reaction is generally fascination at the bizarre products, services, and oddball business schemes that spammers pitch. For example, it wasn’t until they spammed me that I knew that perfume maker Givenchy manufactures a colone aimed at geeks — Pi — A Sign of Intelligent Life.

Now what would be really cool is if they marketed different Pi perfumes. You could have, for example, Babylonian Pi (3.125), Ptolemy Pi (3.14166), and for the man who truly has everything Takahashi and Kanada Pi (number unprintable in its entirety here, but calculated to the 6,442,450,938 digit). And, of course, they could come out with regular upgrades as some group of researchers or another extends the number of digits (for example, the discovery that the five trillionth bit of Pi is zero certainly deserves a special limited edition perfume all its own.

Can it be much longer before some wisecracking movie actress is forced to quip, “Is that an irrational number in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

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