"Such an extremely precise calculation of the figure isn't necessary for any practical scientific use, but researchers say it contributes to improving scientific calculation methods." http://www.newsday.com/sns-othernews-pi.story
the why-question often pops into my mind when I hear of records recognized by Guiness. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Speaking of Pi, is there a ratio between two integers that is more accurate than 22/7 to describe Pi?
Has anyone heard about the new super computer in Japan that will be tracking weather worldwide? Finally someone uses technology for a greater good.
How can they get the length of the diameter and the radius of a circle with enought precision to calculate pi to a trillion places?
The naive approach is to approximate the circle as a regular polygon with n sides. The larger n is, the more precise the answer you get. In the limit of n -> infinity, you get pi. You just need to use large enough n to get the precision you desire. There are lots and lots of less-naive ways to calculate digits of pi: just go to google.com and type in "pi algorithm." - Warren
We have a rather monstrous computer in Australia doing that too. There must be others. http://www.top500.org/
Hi disposable88, If you take any number of digits of Pi and divide it by the proper number, you get an approximation... Eg: 3.14 -> 314/100 3.141592 -> 3141592/1000000 Just pick any of the trillion possibilities we have now Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! PS: Please don't ever mention Pi = 22/7 in a mathematics forum Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Bye! Crisp
Adam, Is this the "monstrous Australian computer" you were referring to?: http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Dec/bch20021210017696.htm Tom
<i>"The naive approach is to approximate the circle as a regular polygon with n sides. The larger n is, the more precise the answer you get. In the limit of n -> infinity, you get pi. You just need to use large enough n to get the precision you desire."</i> Chroot, How do you call this approach Naive?.its a nice approach to work things out.isnt it? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! bye!
<i>"So the only question now is, “why?” </i> May be they think that PI might turn out to be a terminating sequence or a repeating one? Is that possible?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! bye!
Prosoothus Thanks for the page, that was interesting. But no, the machine I refer to is this one: http://www.top500.org/list/2002/11/ number 298.
It is naive in the sense that there exist more efficient algorithms that can calculate more digits with fewer operations. These more efficient algorithms make use of various mathematical "tricks." In the same sense, the insertion sort is a naive approach to sorting -- quicksort and heapsort are more complicated, yet more efficient algorithms. - Warren
Zion Wrote: "May be they think that PI might turn out to be a terminating sequence or a repeating one? Is that possible? " No, that is not possible. It is proven (in most college algebra classes) that only rational numbers are either terminating or repeating decimals. And it is a relatively straightforward proof (although using calculus) that pi is not a rational number. And in reference to the earlier post about "How can they get the length of the diameter and the radius of a circle with enought precision to calculate pi to a trillion places? " (which may have been a joke- sometimes it's hard to tell!), they don't, of course, actually measure lengths- I don't know how you you would get a computer to do that- they use a variety of formulas for pi. Archimedes was able to develop formulas for lengths of polynomials and used them to determine that pi must be between 22/7 and 220/71.
