The number pi, written as π (the Greek letter p), is roughly 3.14. Or 3.14159. Or 3.14159265358979323846264338327950. Or – it goes on forever.
π is equal to how much longer the edge of a circle (its circumference) is than the circle’s width or diameter. π is short for the Greek word περιφέρεια (periphery, circumference). The number has been called π since the 1700s.
π is also equal to double the chance that a needle three inches long will fall on a crack on a floor made of strips of wood three inches wide. That is known as Buffon’s Needle, named after the French scientist who discovered it.
π is also equal to four times:
1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – 1/11 + 1/13 ….
And there are plenty of other ways to come up with the same number, from Archimedes’ polygons to the Chudnovsky brothers’ algorithm.
And that is the strange thing about π: even though it is used to work out numbers that have to do with circles, it appears in things that seem to have little to do with circles. Like Einstein’s relativity, Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, statistics, price investment risk, and number theory.
It is like π is somehow built into the universe, like it is God’s (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s) favourite number.
π is irrational: it cannot be expressed as a fraction made up of two whole numbers. That is why it goes on for ever and never repeats. Johann Lambert proved that in 1768.
π is transcendental: it cannot be expressed as an algebraic equation. That means it was impossible for the Ancient Greeks to “square the circle” by using a compass and a ruler (creating a square with the same area as a circle). Ferdinand Lindemann proved that in 1882.
Timeline: The best value of π at the start of each century:
-2000: 3.16 (Egypt)
-1900:
-1800:
-1700:
-1600:
-1500:
-1400:
-1300:
-1200:
-1100:
-1000:
-900:
-800:
-700:
-600:
-500:
-400:
-300:
-200: 3.143 = 22/7 (Italy, Archimedes)
-100:
+001:
+100:
+200: 3.1416 = 377/120 (Egypt, Ptolemy)
+300: 3.14159 = 3927/1250 (China, Liu Hui)
+400:
+500: 3.1415926 = 355/113 (China, Zu Chongzhi)
+600:
+700:
+800:
+900:
+1000:
+1100:
+1200:
+1300:
+1400: 10 places (India, Madhava of Sangamagrama)
+1500: 16 places (Uzbekistan, Ghiyath al-Kashi)
+1600: 20 places (Netherlands, Ludolph van Ceulen)
+1700: 71 places (Britain, Abraham Sharp)
+1800: 136 places (Austria, Jurij Vega)
+1900: 527 places (Britain, William Shanks)
+2000: 206,158,430,000 places (Japan, Yasumasa Kanada)
Computers were the huge breakthrough in the 1900s. What took Shanks 15 years in the 1800s took a computer less than 15 minutes in 1954. Computers reached:
- a thousand places by 1949,
- a million by 1973,
- a billion by 1989, and
- a trillion by 2002.
π so far has been calculated to 22,459,157,718,361 places. It is not even on the Internet because it would take several months just to upload it.
π so far has been memorized to 70,000 places according to Guinness World Records. The record is held by Rajveer Meena. In 2015 at VIT University in Vellore, India he said the whole thing, blindfolded (pictured above). It took him nearly ten hours.
Pi Day – March 14th is Pi Day in the US. That is because the US regularly writes Gregorian dates backwards: 3/14. And because “π” sounds just like “pie” in English, the day is observed by eating pie.
Einstein was born on Pi Day 1879 and Stephen Hawking died on Pi Day 2018.
– Abagond, 2018.
Sources: mainly Google Images, numberworld.org (that awesome computer), Guinness World Records, Wikipedia (timeline), SINA.com (stray facts), dictionary.com (how it got its name); “Beyond Numeracy” (1991) by John Allen Paulos (Buffon, Maxwell, etc); “Isaac Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science & Technology” (1972) by Isaac Asimov (some of the history).
See also:
- π to 100,000 places, to 1 million places
- computer
- Archimedes
- Ptolemy
- Einstein
- Gregorian calendar
- The largest cities through time
- White Inventor Argument
602
Wow, that’s really geeky. How about a post on Tom Fuller a/k/a Negro Tom, the Virginia calculator and the fact that the lying scumbag know as Thomas Jefferson, a fellow Virginian never took an interest in Mr. Fuller’s mathematical abilities?
Apparently such person would have clashed with his claims in Notes on the state of Virginia That “…Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.”
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[…] https://abagond.wordpress.com/2018/03/14/the-number-pi-π/ […]
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How have I lived this long and not known 3.14 in a mirror would read like PIE?!?
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Cool, blerd = Black Nerk, geekiness.
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blerd= Black Nerd
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Stephen Hawking dies on PI Day.
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@ gro jo
Africans, especially Nigerians, are well known for their math savvy. You have posted some examples on other threads.
One that comes to mind is Ufot Ekong. According to Huffpo UK:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nigerian-student-ufot-ekong-solves-30-year-old-maths-equation_n_7533358.html
Jefferson was an ignoramus.
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“Jefferson was an ignoramus.”
I disagree. He was the proud owner of 5 thousand acres of land. He didn’t have the inclination to work the land himself, so, it wasn’t in his interest to see the people he exploited as humans like him. He was a brilliant man who knew on which side his bread was buttered.
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@ gro jo
Hmm.
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“Afrofem
@ gro jo
Hmm.”
You seem surprised by my claim. It’s obvious to me that Jefferson can’t be accused of being ignorant since he was one of the most erudite people of his time. His lies are best explained by malice toward Blacks based on pure self-interest. He wasn’t going to work those 5 thousand acres and he wasn’t inclined to pay those who did.
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@ gro jo
I’m not surprised.
You made valid points and I reevaluated my hasty conclusion.
“Ignoramus” was the wrong word. “Self-serving” is more accurate.
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And yet…
A person can be erudite and perspicacious about a lot of subjects and methods and still be an ignoramus about other subjects.
Jefferson wasn’t stupid, but I doubt he knew or cared about the mental capacity of his human “property”.
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“Jefferson wasn’t stupid, but I doubt he knew or cared about the mental capacity of his human “property”.”
In your opinion, what would motivate him to take such view? A man of his erudition knew of the African kingdoms such as Kush, Ethiopia and Songhai, that’s why he wrote the following after the lines I quoted above:
“It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation.”
This is not a product of ignorance, but pure malice on his part. Fuller was a product of African education, since his owners were illiterate and he left Africa at 14. I doubt that he did not know of the existence Abraham Gannibal, Pushkin’s great-grandfather and a first class engineer or of the philosopher, Anton Wilhelm Amo. His malice is revealed in all its nakedness in his comments on the poetry of Phillis Wheatley.
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“Jefferson wasn’t stupid, but I doubt he knew or cared about the mental capacity of his human “property”.”
In your opinion, what would motivate him to take such view? A man of his erudition knew of African kingdoms such as Kush, Ethiopia and Songhai, that’s why he wrote the following after the lines I quoted above:
“It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation.”
This is not a product of ignorance, but pure malice on his part. Fuller was a product of African education, since his owners were illiterate and he left Africa at 14. I doubt that he did not know of the existence of Abraham Gannibal, Pushkin’s great-grandfather and a first class engineer or of the philosopher, Anton Wilhelm Amo. His malice is revealed in all its nakedness in his comments on the poetry of Phillis Wheatley.
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“The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation.”
In that comment, Jefferson reminds me of Nixon comparing (and damning with faint praise) Black folk and Mexican Americans. In a taped recording, Nixon opined:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-11-07/news/9911070165_1_oval-office-tapes-nixon-john-d-ehrlichman
In both figures, I see the same bigoted hypocrisy. Both go out of their way to trash Black people’s lives. They destroy Black relationships, deny Black freedom and stifle Black opportunity. Then they turn around and demean the survivors of their destructive acts. Seems to be a feature, not a bug of White supremacists and their systems of oppression.
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Can you share Jefferson’s comments on the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley? Perhaps in the Black People According To Jefferson thread:
It seems we have already drifted away from the number pi.
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“…they steal, they’re dishonest.”
Look who’s talking, Tricky Dick! “I am not a crook” … bwahahaha!!
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