Pi is an interesting number. It goes on forever, doesn’t repeat itself, and appears to be entirely random. And in an infinite, random sequence, you get every possible combination of numbers eventually. Your phone number is in there somewhere. And every book written, if you convert the numbers into ASCII.
Searching Pi for books like that would be stupid though, you’ll burn up the best computers on the planet before you get anything worthwhile. There is, however, a quicker alternative.
Almost every single book published since 1966 has an ISBN number. These days they all start 978, then there’s another ten digits. The last one’s a check digit made by multiplying the others up in a certain way.
So I wrote a program that searches Pi for ISBN numbers. Then it checks them to see if the check digit is a valid one. Then it looks the ISBN up on Google Books.
Something about this project just tweaks the book nerd in me. My only complaint is that it’s not “ISBN number” it’s “ISBN.” Saying “ISBN number” is like saying “PIN number.”
Michael Sauers is the Director of Logan Library in Logan, UT. Prior to this he was one of the founding staff and Technology Manager for Do Space in Omaha, NE. After earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany's School of Information Science and Policy Michael spent his first 20 years as a librarian training other librarians in technology along with time as a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, a technology consultant, and a bookseller. He has written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and has published 14 books ranging from library technology, blogging, Web design, and an index to a popular horror magazine. In his spare time, he blogs at TravelinLibrarian.info, runs The Collector's Guide to Dean Koontz website at CollectingKoontz.com, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.
Unless otherwise stated, all opinions are my own and are not to be considered those of the City of Logan, UT.
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One Reply to “The PiSBN Project”
Yup, fair call! It’s RAS* syndrome, nearly as annoying as PIN numbers. Mea culpa 😉
Pi is an interesting number. It goes on forever, doesn’t repeat itself, and appears to be entirely random. And in an infinite, random sequence, you get every possible combination of numbers eventually. Your phone number is in there somewhere. And every book written, if you convert the numbers into ASCII.
Yup, fair call! It’s RAS* syndrome, nearly as annoying as PIN numbers. Mea culpa 😉
Best,
Geoff
*Redundant Acronym Syndrome