Pi

[BjD]

SuperPI now you too can find Pi to 33Million decimal places
Intersting to note, the site says it takes ~3days for an old Pentium 90, a modern desktop can do it in 20 to 30 minutes. Thats progress
I remember reading a Usenet post where a guy was astonished at how fast modern systems can compute Pi, he used to have to set aside days on a supercomputer to get it to 1million decimal places. Last time I did it it took 45seconds

[Guest]

pi = 3.14 thats all i kno - but i hav a smart little button om my calculator that helps me

yes, but that gets you to 10 digits and rounds the last digits, oh, the amount of people whove sed ive got a digit wrong because their calculator rounded the last digit!

[Pando]

Some GREAT trivia ( sorry guys, I'm sure there was stupidiy in all our nations, but this is the only one I got sent )

In 1897 a state House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill setting pi equal to 16/(sqrt 3), which approximately equals 9.2376. In which state of the United States did this occur?

A. California
B. Indiana
C. Massachusetts
D. Florida
E. Canada

Besides, the number was KNOWN to be approximately 3.1-3.2 for roughly THREE AND HALF THOUSAND YEARS !!!!!

It had to be a MIT joke, so I'm guessing Massachusetts.

[Bob]

Some GREAT trivia ( sorry guys, I'm sure there was stupidiy in all our nations, but this is the only one I got sent )

In 1897 a state House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill setting pi equal to 16/(sqrt 3), which approximately equals 9.2376. In which state of the United States did this occur?

A. California
B. Indiana
C. Massachusetts
D. Florida
E. Canada

Besides, the number was KNOWN to be approximately 3.1-3.2 for roughly THREE AND HALF THOUSAND YEARS !!!!!

Must be Indiana, I think they voted for bush.

also, i bet at least 3 in ten people say canada

[Tourbillon]

I knew pi by 22/7 or 3.141 only... I'm so sad.
Though in my math book it states that pi was calculated to a million digits.
Argh, f*** Ptolemy .

[dydzi]

I almost regret posting this, as I don't like spamming

you don't
so you're some kind of masochist then


anyway, does any of you guys who say those digits that π has, actually know what does pi is?

[Guest]

yes, i know

[Rybitron]

im a little fuzy on the details but my calc professor told us some guy (australian?) calculated Pi to a couple hundred thousand digits or so several hundred years ago and no one knew how to check if he was right or not until fairly recently and they figured out he set and did it all by hand because after like 100,000 digits he got off one and everything after that was wrong. that would just suck.

[Matra et Alpine]

Yeah, William Shanks (he was English) had it to 800+ digits in the 1800s and then a guy uses a desktop calculator in 1940s to show he got it wrong from about 500 onwards !!

[PerfAdv]

Is there a pattern that emerges or is it random?

[Matra et Alpine]

PI is an "irrational number" and so there are no repeating patterns - which is why some people love doing it to large numbers of digits. If you found a "pattern" you'd be world famous


Somewhere there is a group of 5 or 6 9s IIRC

[derekthetree]

PI is an "irrational number" and so there are no repeating patterns - which is why some people love doing it to large numbers of digits. If you found a "pattern" you'd be world famous

Somewhere there is a group of 5 or 6 9s IIRC

how the hell does that prove pi is irrational?

that's one complex proof

[GT F1]

In theory, if you found the value of pi, you could square the circle.

[my porsche]

another testament to the dumbing down of science and engineering in schools

Not your fault, blame the idiots who run school systems who haven't a clue about the depth of science !!

yeah lets all learn it to the millionth decimal!

isnt it something like 3 1/7?

[Matra et Alpine]

yeah lets all learn it to the millionth decimal!

And education system that only taught the VALUE of thenubmer and not it's derivation and importance is the point being made and confirmed by the comment that beign able to quote the NUBMER had any relevance proves the inadequacy fo teh education system

isnt it something like 3 1/7?

erm as an approximation that is less accurate than the value worked out 3000 years ago that's fine. .... "Mr Bush, sir, we have another candicdate for our intelligence service, sir, will I recruit him ? "