Secret Agent: The calculation I give you now was actually made in November, but only now have security measures been reduced, resulting in its declassification. Of course there's also the fact that LC-A, my collaborator, is slow as can be when it comes to forking over visuals--something to do with a predilection for 35mm. Note also--at the time, I'd signed up with the University of Aesthematics. As the biggest group, it seemed the best place to maintain cover. Anyway, LC-A and I go way back. We've been working together off and on for over 7 years. We're tight. Thick as thieves.

LC-A: Ha. In your dreams.

SA: Oh be quiet. Just give us the first shot yeah?





SA: Muppet. That was supposed to be the establishing shot. You know, show people where we were working, give a sense of scale.

LC-A: Quitcher moanin. I just shoot what you tell me to.

SA: Yeah, but quadruple exposures aren't quite the thing here are they. Well folks, those windows you can sort of make out along the top edge are about five feet across, and ... hold on, I've got something better here somewhere. Ah yes:




LC-A: What's that for? Why are you getting that out?

SA: What do you mean?

LC-A: CoolPixE3100's work. Why bring up what you did when you abandoned me?

SA: You're off on one. I'm merely showing this to give people an idea of the scale of the space. That balcony is where I stood to drop the matchsticks, and my lower foot there is already seven feet up or so.

LC-A: Come on. Are you showing it to remind me that were it not for the "death in the line" I'd be gathering dust?

SA: Whatever. Moving on. Pi. Turns out you can drop a bunch of sticks onto a surface with parallel lines, and can calculate pi based on the number of sticks that land crossing the lines. The full proof of how these things relate to pi can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon's_needle
The relevant formula, is this:

Pi = 2ln/th

where l is the length of the stick, n the number of sticks dropped,t the distance between the parallel lines, and h the number of sticks that landed crossing lines. I'll spare you the importance of pi to the intelligence community. Needless to say, it is substantial.

Luckily I have at my disposal a 129 year old wood floor, and a bag of matchsticks.


SA: Were you feeling ok there? I didn't get you up too early did I?

LC-A: Oh just carry on.

SA: Well, if LC-A hadn't been so fuzzy-headed there, you could have easily seen that the boards are 87mm wide, and that the matchsticks are 43mm long.




SA: The first throw was a bit haphazard. 196 matchsticks off the balcony all at once to see what kind of pattern we'd get.



SA: Oh, see, it wasn't just early. You got the floor in focus there-maybe you need your eyes checked. I've got the name of a great surgeon. Genius with a laser. Get the lenses all shipshape.

LC-A: Go digital? Me? You're having a laugh.

SA: No, seriously. You'd be a sharp ol' bugger.

LC-A: Not on your life.

SA: Fine. See if you can get any more work with results like that. Anyway folks, I counted them matchsticks, came up with 77 from the glass, which were crossing lines on the floor, and 123 from the plastic, which weren't. Oh, wait a minute. I thought you double checked the count.

LC-A: Me?

SA: Yeah, you. There were supposed to be 196. You know, they're in the diner and the waitress drops the toothpicks, and he's all "One hundred and ninety six", and the waitress is all "No, there are two hundred in the box", and then they check and there are 4 left.

LC-A: Yeah I know the scene. I just didn't check the count. You said "come take some photos of matchsticks", so I took some photos of matchsticks.

SA: You were supposed to check the count. You're such a ruiner. But whatever. You can't ruin science; I'm moving on.



SA: For the next one, I took out 4 matchsticks, and then threw the rest one at a time, trying for a bit of precision this go. I couldn't aim tightly enough to affect whether they'd cross lines or not, cause they fall a bit like feathers, spinning and twirling all the way. So the numbers are still totally valid. And they are: 63 crossing, 133 not. And LC-A, I'm not even going to start on those chairs in the bottom left.

LC-A: Good, they're there for perspective and context.

SA: They still look sloppy.

LC-A: Right. Cause your "drawing" doesn't.



SA: 196 wasn't enough to include any other characters, at least from that height.

LCA-A: Didn't someone walk past while you were doing this and remark "Hey, you've drawn Saturn in matchsticks"?

SA: Yes, he did. Philistine.
The count this time was 59 crossing and 137 not. Which makes for a total of 199 sticks crossing lines and 592 sticks not crossing lines, over the three trials. Why not do more, you ask? Because counting matchsticks is time consuming, and an agent's time might be better put to use in other ways. Also it's as dull as counting money that's not yours.
Like a good little spy, I've shown my calculation:



SA: And there you have it. Pi, calculated to be 3.141592. I stopped at that point, feeling confident that I had produced as precise a calculation as the agency might require.

LC-A: OMG. You're such a liar. You don't seriously expect people to let that go do you?

SA: I don't know what you're talking about. I've shown my work. It's totally transparent.

LC-A: Except that you've substituted the accepted value of Pi for what your experiment produced. It should read 2.946456 etc. You're a charlatan and a cheat.

SA: Bastard. I should have known you'd try something shifty like that. You do realise you're ruining everything, and compromising the security of all, right? You better have somewhere clever to hide.

LC-A: Jeez, you just won't give up will you?

SA: Because I'm right. Good people, trust in science. Pi is 3.141592... you know it, I know it, and the matchsticks know it too.

And LC-A, you're sacked.