This article, about the ‘cult of pi’ and the sport of finding ever more of its digits, grabbed me because of this fascinating mention about a different number:
’Interestingly, although pi goes on forever, its digits never repeating, it is not the most complicated number imaginable – at least according to algorithmic information theory. This mathematical field, developed by a 15-year-old Argentinean-American called Gregory Chaitin, equates the complexity of a number with the length of the computer program – written in the 0s and 1s of binary arithmetic – needed to generate it. Pi requires a relatively short computer program to create, and so, by this measure, is not a very complex number. By contrast, omega (Ω), otherwise known as “Chaitin’s number”, requires an infinitely long computer program. Incapable of being summarised by, or compressed into, fewer digits than its actual length, it makes pi appear a mere pipsqueak.
But this does not lessen people’s fascination with pi.…’
— via New Humanist
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