Workout log

[flexagon]

I did upper-body weights today... the usual, pretty much, with 18 pullups total (5, 5, 8*) and then lazy stretching and playing in the stretching area. My back is still happy and my splits are still crap, so today I worked on dropbacks and fake back walkovers again. I also succeeded in falling back from a handstand into a bridge, for the first time ever -- yay! When I can do that consistently it'll be an important step toward being able to work handstands away from the wall, and, for that matter, toward doing a front walkover. See, bluechromis, I'm doing my walkover homework. :)

Today's moment of absolute shock was brought to you by my seeing Michael J. Fox on the cover of the AARP magazine at the gym.

Today's other moment of shock came from this sentence in my Scheme book: For example, we can approximate pi using the fact that 6/pi²is the probability that two integers chosen at random will have no factors in common; that is, that their greatest common divisor will be 1. I... we can!? Wow, I'd love to see the proof of that one. If anyone can track it down, I'll give you a cookie. For one thing, I really want to know how you pick a random integer out of an infinite set in the first place, or if you did, how you'd know you did. You can't exactly make sure that half your random integers are larger than the middle integer and half of them are smaller.

* Yeah, for this set I switched from the palms-parallel hand grip to palms-in.

Comments

[heisenbug]

I bet you don't have to literally select from the infinite set of integers to get the approximiate effect. Probably selecting from 1 to a billion or so works almost as well.

I don't think I've seen the proof, but I'm guessing it involves a limit. Like, as the set of integers you're selecting from approaches infinity, the probability approaches 6/π².

[heisenbug]

Here it is. The proof uses the Riemann zeta function, which I've determined is a function that mathematicians use when they don't want you to understand.