Futureoftheocean prizes the pi() divide
Dr. Ionas divide by pi() or the golden rule of any verification
I was lucky to have great teachers, great professors and exceptional mentors.
It is not something what everyone has therefore I have the duty and the burden to payback.
This is one of my biggest drives and I’m aware that it is something difficult to be understood by somebody who missed great teachers and professors and somebody who never had a mentor.
Three of these great professors are sitting on the top of the table on the front picture of this paper.
They were (looking how they were sitting from left to right)
Prof. Dr. Ovid Popovici
Prof. Dr. Ion Bidoaie
Prof. Dr. Valeriu Ceanga
The younger men in this picture were my teachers as well and among them is captured for our memory my mentor Dr. Ovidiu Ionas.
Dr. Ionas was not my only mentor, Prof. Dr. Liviu Stoicescu, my Ph.D. coordinator was my other mentor but I have to recognize that Dr. Ionas was closer to me than anybody else with the role of teacher or professor maybe because he generously offered me some memorable lessons about what does mean to be professional and especially what does mean to be a sensible professional.
The people knowing me reasonable well have heard from my many words of wisdom and eventual anecdotes what presumably are originated from Dr. Ionas wisdom but it is one what I prize especially like a professional verifier.
This one is about the importance of dividing by pi() in the verification work and this I would like to tell you to the best of my memory and to the best of my application of it.
The rule
Dr. Ionas rule of dividing by pi() as enounce by himself in person is:
If one engineer verifies some engineering calculation (his own calculations or some other engineer calculation), and thinks that the results might be unrealistic, then this engineer should divide the values of the results by pi().
If the numbers resulted still look unrealistic then the results are wrong, terrible wrong. The issue is simple a gross error in inputs, in the arithmetic, in method or even in the judgement.
If the numbers resulted after the division by pi() look better, say reasonable, then the problem is far more subtle an usually lays in the refinement of inputs or method… and yes… these cases are the most complicate ones…
I did my best to transit this wisdom further
... so I told some young engineers about it. It is no wander that I was asked why pi()…
Honestly I have no idea why pi() and not 3 (the closest sensible integer) or 2 or maybe 5… anyhow, 10 already means one order of magnitude therefore everybody would know that something went really really wrong with that calculation.
Personally I like pi() maybe because it is a natural value; in the same way as after a quarter of century of structural engineering I came to admire the natural construction of the roots of some trees and to recognize directly that a certain design looks better (harmonious) than other…
Thank you very much Professor Ionas
Thank you very much Dr. Ionas - to be completely honest – thank you very much Professor Ionas – for revealing for me the value of pi() outside the circle but inside the magic of the human mind!