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Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

"Did he just have a special love for π, perhaps based on his birthday?"

Einstein lived in Europe for 54 of his 76 years. Since no one in Europe uses the mm/dd/yy date convention, I'd be surprised if this coincidence was significant to him, or even that he was aware of it at all.

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It's a joke. The author of the post makes it clear that it's a coincidence.

I know. I was trying to make a point about basing an otherwise interesting article about Einstein and GR on a numeric coincidence involving an arbitrary birthday and an illogical date format that is essentially only used by one country on the planet. Without appearing to be attacking said country.

14 March would be rendered as 3/14 in middle and big endian styles (3/14/2014 and 2014/3/14).

Neat. And next year it will be 3/14/15 in middle-endian.

... and will extend to the first 10 digits of Pi if you include time:

3/14/15 9:26:53 am

I think it's a stretch to say the article is "based" on that coincidence. The line is a throw-away.

The 3/14 thing is called a 'hook [1] - a journalistic practice to make the article relevant to today. I just thought this was unnecessary as the actual science content of the article was, to me, very interesting in its own right. Thats all really.

[1] http://mediacareers.about.com/od/glossary/g/Hook.htm

It's relevant today because it is Pi Day and Einstein's birthday. That's the hook. The joke is a throwaway.

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