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The number π (/ p aɪ / ⓘ; spelled out as "pi") is a mathematical constant, approximately equal to 3.14159, that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.It appears in many formulae across mathematics and physics, and some of these formulae are commonly used for defining π, to avoid relying on the definition of the length of a curve.
Later computers calculated pi to extraordinary numbers of digits (2.7 trillion as of August 2010), [4] and people began memorizing more and more of the output. The world record for the number of digits memorized has exploded since the mid-1990s, and it stood at 100,000 as of October 2006. [ 6 ]
The last 100 decimal digits of the latest world record computation are: [1] 7034341087 5351110672 0525610978 1945263024 9604509887 5683914937 4658179610 2004394122 9823988073 3622511852 Graph showing how the record precision of numerical approximations to pi measured in decimal places (depicted on a logarithmic scale), evolved in human history.
Using just nine digits of pi, scientists say it can calculate the Earth's circumference so accurately it only errs by about a quarter of an inch (0.6 centimeters) for every 25,000 miles (about ...
In 1988, physicist Larry Shaw decided this enigmatic number deserved its own holiday and started Pi Day, choosing March 14 to represent the first three digits of pi—and because it also happens ...
The digits of pi extend into infinity, and pi is itself an irrational number, meaning it can’t be truly represented by an integer fraction (the one we often learn in school, 22/7, is not very ...
BBP and BBP-inspired algorithms have been used in projects such as PiHex [5] for calculating many digits of π using distributed computing. The existence of this formula came as a surprise. It had been widely believed that computing the nth digit of π is just as hard as computing the first n digits. [1] Since its discovery, formulas of the ...
For example, German mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen of the 16th century spent a major part of his life calculating the first 35 digits of pi. [22] Using computers and supercomputers , some of the mathematical constants, including π, e , and the square root of 2, have been computed to more than one hundred billion digits.