Editing 10: Pi Equals

{{comic
| number    = 10
| date      = September 30, 2005
| title     = Pi Equals
| before    = <big><big><span class="plainlinks">[https://web.archive.org/web/20070927001941/http://xkcd-drawings.livejournal.com/?skip=40#:~:text=8%3A44%20pm-,Pi%20equals,-(4%20Comments Original title</span>]: '''Pi equals'''</big></big>
| image     = pi.jpg
| titletext = My most famous drawing, and one of the first I did for the site
}}

==Explanation==
This was the eleventh comic originally posted to [[LiveJournal]]. The previous one was [[9: Serenity is coming out tomorrow]], and the next one was [[14: Copyright]]. It was among the [[:Category:First day on LiveJournal|first thirteen comics]] posted to LiveJournal within 12 minutes on September 30th, 2005, on the first day of the xkcd LiveJournal account.

There are two possible references here. One is from the book ''{{w|Contact (novel)|Contact}}'' by Carl Sagan, where the existence of God was shown in the last chapter to be encoded in the digits of {{w|pi}}. The other is an old joke of a {{w|Fortune cookie|fortune cookie}} with a fortune that reads, "Help! I'm trapped in a fortune cookie factory!" Similar jokes are often repeated for any mass-manufactured personalized item, often implying that the worker who made the item is working in a sweatshop somewhere or is literally trapped inside a factory and calling for help via the items they produce. This joke is also referenced in [[327: Exploits of a Mom]]'s title text, where [[Mrs. Roberts]]' [[Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory Elaine Roberts|daughter]]'s name is "Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory." The most literal interpretation of the joke would be that some being who helped to create the universe in a "universe factory" snuck a message into the digits of pi, asking for help to get out. Mathematical concepts being manufactured in a factory is the main mental image here. One can't help but wonder if the [http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TimeBandits.jpg primordial beings who labored on the universe] to produce things like the gravitational constant and pi have a labor union. Judging by the fact that they're calling for help, it seems they don't.

Since pi is irrational (it has an infinite, non-repeating decimal representation), if each number pair were assigned a letter from the alphabet, or if it was converted to base-26, ASCII, or some other encoding, the entire works of Shakespeare, as well as any other expressible piece of information, including the message in this comic, could presumably be found. It is not really ''known'' that pi really has {{w|normal number|this property}}, but the absence of this property would in itself be an extraordinary coincidence. However, the probability of finding any given string of numbers within a calculable range of digits of pi [http://www.angio.net/pi/whynotpi.html diminishes rapidly as the string length increases].

In the novel {{w|Contact (novel)|Contact}} by {{w|Carl Sagan}}, he includes a "[https://web.archive.org/web/20180801055937/http://goddoesnt.blogspot.com:80/2013/10/pi-and-signature-of-god-from-carl.html Signature of God]." In brief, the signature consists of a very long string of 1s and 0s far out (after some 10^20 seemingly random numbers) in the base-11 expansion of pi that when arranged in a square of a specific size yields a clear drawing of a circle with a diameter of several hundred digits.  The existence of this pattern was hinted to the protagonist by a member of an advanced alien civilization as being encoded in physics by an even more advanced civilization with the ability to create universes. Interestingly enough, this could also work for pictures: if you assign a set of nine numbers to equal an RGB hexadecimal color value, eventually you will find the Mona Lisa.

In the book ''[[xkcd: volume 0]]'', this comic has a red text at the bottom of the page: <span style=color:red>CNEG BAR BS RVTUG VA URK: RR AVAR RVTUG SVIR BAR BAR RVTUG</span>. It's {{w|ROT13}} for "PART ONE OF EIGHT IN HEX: EE NINE EIGHT FIVE ONE ONE EIGHT". "7108914" appears in position 13,709,690 of pi, suggesting that the length of the string of "digits" that is 'helpimtrappedinauniversefactory' is correspondent to a good 13,709,675 digits long, meaning each individual letter corresponds to about 456989.166667 digits. Aggravatingly, however, if the string was instead "71089314", it would appear at position 2533.
* If the letters correspond to the phone keypad, then these digits are wrong: 3.141592653589793<span style=color:red>4</span>3<span style=color:red>574687277</span>3<span style=color:red>3462864</span>8<span style=color:red>37733228679</span>7<span style=color:red>108914</span>
* If the words correspond to their length, then these digits are wrong: 3.141592653589793<span style=color:red>4272187710</span>8<span style=color:red>914</span>
* And if the words are omitted altogether, then these digits are wrong: 3.141592653589793<span style=color:red>7108914</span>

In the title text, [[Randall]] notes that this is one of his first drawings and it became one of his most famous comics. At the time, it was re-released on [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com] on January 1, 2006, with the number 10, but it was the eleventh comic posted to LiveJournal. See the [[#Trivia|trivia section]] below. In ''xkcd: volume 0'', this comic has a different title text: "I've put rescue instructions in e. You'll need the cheat codes for your universe, which I hid in the square root of two.".

The volume 0 title text is a message styled so that it would appear to come from the maker(s) of this universe, detailing how to escape it. A {{w|cheat code}} is a type of utility in certain video games, that, when inputted, gives the player things not normally granted in normal gameplay. As the universe is not such a game,{{citation needed}} such a concept would be somewhat nonsensical.
The hex number "EE985118" is 4,002,959,640 in decimal, so that could be the answer to the number in the title-text.

==Transcript==
:[A huge π to the left, then a large equal-to sign, and then five rows of text.]
:<big><big><big>π</big></big></big> = 3.14159265
::3589793help
::imtrappedin
::auniversefac
::tory7108914...

==Trivia==
* [[36: Scientists]] was initially published as a duplicate of this comic. Over three months after the original posting, Randall noticed the error and corrected it sometime between [http://web.archive.org/web/20060423175703/http://www.xkcd.com/c36.html April 23, 2006] and [http://web.archive.org/web/20060705231511/http://xkcd.com/c36.html July 5, 2006], when the updated version appeared in the Web Archive. He likely found an old drawing that was never meant for publication and used it instead, so it wouldn't appear out of place among the other comics from that period. This is why [[36: Scientists]] [[:Category:No date|doesn't have a date]] like most other comics.
* This used to be one of the [[Footer comics|footer comics]] featured in the bottom segment of [https://xkcd.com xkcd.com].

{{comic discussion}}

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