amazing etymologies

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 02/18/2002 12:11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time,
pmcgraw at LINFIELD.EDU writes:

> Naah!  Remember how easy it was to do calculations using pi (or even to
>  remember what, specifically, pi was) in grade school arithmetic?  Obviously
>  the original expression was "easy as pi," reflecting this common
experience.

   Having degrees in both mathematics and computer engineering, I can assure
you that you are wrong, as the computation of pi, although hobbit-forming
among professional mathematicians, is liable to leave laypeople pie-eyed.

.  The actual origin of the phrase is from the verb "to pie" (OED2 pie v 3
"To make (type) into 'pie'; to mix or jumble up indiscriminately").  The
reference "easy as pie" means "as easy as it is to scramble type, as
contrasted to the effort required to set type correctly".

   As an example, consider the crawler observed on CNN last Friday
"...Enron's accounting regularities..."

      James A. Landau
      Systems Engineer
      FAA Technical Center (ACT-350/BCI)
      Atlantic City Airport NJ 08405 USA

P.S.  If a formula (e.g. to compute pi) doubles the number of correct digits
at each step, it is said to have "quadratic convergence".  If it triples the
number of correct digits, it is said to have "cubic convergence" and so on
through quartic convergence, quintic convergence, etc.  There does exist a
formula for computing pi for which the number of correct digits increases
seven times after each iteration.  This formula (no, I'm not kidding) is said
to have "septic convergence".