Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!

[Hide]
The results for Wikimedia's licensing update vote have been [Help us with
announced. View the results here. translations!]

Pi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the mathematical constant. For the Greek letter, see pi (letter). For other
uses, see Pi (disambiguation).

When a circle's diameter is 1, its circumference is pi.

List of numbers – Irrational numbers
ζ(3) – √2 – √3 – √5 – φ – α – e – π – δ

Binary 11.00100100001111110110…

Decimal 3.14159265358979323846…

Hexadecimal 3.243F6A8885A308D31319…

Continued fraction
Note that this continued fraction is not periodic.

Pi or π is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its
diameter in Euclidean space; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle's area to the square
of its radius. It is approximately equal to 3.14159 in the usual decimal notation (see the table
for its representation in some other bases). π is one of the most important mathematical and
physical constants: many formulae from mathematics, science, and engineering involve π.[1]
π is an irrational number, which means that its value cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction
m/n, where m and n are integers. Consequently, its decimal representation never ends or
repeats. It is also a transcendental number, which means that no finite sequence of algebraic
operations on integers (powers, roots, sums, etc.) can be equal to its value; proving this was a
late achievement in mathematical history and a significant result of 19th century German
mathematics. Throughout the history of mathematics, there has been much effort to determine
π more accurately and to understand its nature; fascination with the number has even carried
over into non-mathematical culture.
The Greek letter π, often spelled out pi in text, was adopted for the number from the Greek
word for perimeter "περίμετρος", first by William Jones in 1707, and popularized by
Leonhard Euler in 1737.[2] The constant is occasionally also referred to as the circular
constant, Archimedes' constant (not to be confused with an Archimedes number), or
Ludolph's number (from a German mathematician whose efforts to calculate more of its
digits became famous).
Contents
[hide]
• 1 Fundamentals
○ 1.1 The letter π
○ 1.2 Definition
○ 1.3 Irrationality and transcendence
○ 1.4 Numerical value
○ 1.5 Calculating π
• 2 History
○ 2.1 Geometrical period
○ 2.2 Classical period
○ 2.3 Computation in the computer age
○ 2.4 Memorizing digits
• 3 Advanced properties
○ 3.1 Numerical approximations
○ 3.2 Open questions
• 4 Use in mathematics and science
○ 4.1 Geometry and trigonometry
○ 4.2 Complex numbers and calculus
○ 4.3 Physics
○ 4.4 Probability and statistics
• 5 Pi in popular culture
• 6 See also
• 7 References
• 8 External links

Fundamentals
The letter π
Main article: pi (letter)
Lower-case π is used to symbolize the constant.
The name of the Greek letter π is pi, and this spelling is commonly used in typographical
contexts when the Greek letter is not available, or its usage could be problematic. It is not
normally capitalised (Π) even at the beginning of a sentence. When referring to this constant,
the symbol π is always pronounced like "pie" in English, which is the conventional English
pronunciation of the Greek letter. In Greek, the name of this letter is pronounced /pi/.
The constant is named "π" because "π" is the first letter of the Greek words περιφέρεια
(periphery) and περίμετρος (perimeter), probably referring to its use in the formula to find the
circumference, or perimeter, of a circle.[3] π is Unicode character U+03C0 ("Greek small letter
pi").[4]
Definition
Circumference = π × diameter
In Euclidean plane geometry, π is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its
diameter:[3]
The ratio C/d is constant, regardless of a circle's size. For example, if a circle has twice the
diameter d of another circle it will also have twice the circumference C, preserving the ratio
C
/d.
Area of the circle = π × area of the shaded square
Alternatively π can be also defined as the ratio of a circle's area (A) to the area of a square
whose side is equal to the radius:[3][5]
These definitions depend on results of Euclidean geometry, such as the fact that all circles are
similar. This can be considered a problem when π occurs in areas of mathematics that
otherwise do not involve geometry. For this reason, mathematicians often prefer to define π
without reference to geometry, instead selecting one of its analytic properties as a definition.
A common choice is to define π as twice the smallest positive x for which cos(x) = 0.[6] The
formulas below illustrate other (equivalent) definitions.
Irrationality and transcendence
Main article: Proof that π is irrational
Being an irrational number, π cannot be written as the ratio of two integers. This was proven
in 1768 by Johann Heinrich Lambert.[7] In the 20th century, proofs were found that require no
prerequisite knowledge beyond integral calculus. One of those, due to Ivan Niven, is widely
known.[8][9] A somewhat earlier similar proof is by Mary Cartwright.[10]
Furthermore, π is also transcendental, as was proven by Ferdinand von Lindemann in 1882.
This means that there is no polynomial with rational coefficients of which π is a root.[11] An
important consequence of the transcendence of π is the fact that it is not constructible.
Because the coordinates of all points that can be constructed with compass and straightedge
are constructible numbers, it is impossible to square the circle: that is, it is impossible to
construct, using compass and straightedge alone, a square whose area is equal to the area of a
given circle.[12] This is historically significant, for squaring a circle is one of the easily
understood elementary geometry problems left to us from antiquity; many amateurs in
modern times have attempted to solve each of these problems, and their efforts are sometimes
ingenious, but in this case, doomed to failure: a fact not always understood by the amateur
involved.
Numerical value
See also: Numerical approximations of π
The numerical value of π truncated to 50 decimal places is:[13]
3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510
See the links below and those at sequence A000796 in OEIS for more digits.
While the value of π has been computed to more than a trillion (1012) digits,[14] elementary
applications, such as calculating the circumference of a circle, will rarely require more than a
dozen decimal places. For example, a value truncated to 11 decimal places is accurate enough
to calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the earth with a precision of a millimeter,
and one truncated to 39 decimal places is sufficient to compute the circumference of any
circle that fits in the observable universe to a precision comparable to the size of a hydrogen
atom.[15][16]
Because π is an irrational number, its decimal expansion never ends and does not repeat. This
infinite sequence of digits has fascinated mathematicians and laymen alike, and much effort
over the last few centuries has been put into computing more digits and investigating the
number's properties.[17] Despite much analytical work, and supercomputer calculations that
have determined over 1 trillion digits of π, no simple base-10 pattern in the digits has ever
been found.[18] Digits of π are available on many web pages, and there is software for
calculating π to billions of digits on any personal computer.
Calculating π
Main article: Computing π
π can be empirically estimated by drawing a large circle, then measuring its diameter and
circumference and dividing the circumference by the diameter. Another geometry-based
approach, due to Archimedes,[19] is to calculate the perimeter, Pn , of a regular polygon with n
sides circumscribed around a circle with diameter d. Then
That is, the more sides the polygon has, the closer the approximation approaches π.
Archimedes determined the accuracy of this approach by comparing the perimeter of the
circumscribed polygon with the perimeter of a regular polygon with the same number of sides
inscribed inside the circle. Using a polygon with 96 sides, he computed the fractional range:
.[20]
π can also be calculated using purely mathematical methods. Most formulae used for
calculating the value of π have desirable mathematical properties, but are difficult to
understand without a background in trigonometry and calculus. However, some are quite
simple, such as this form of the Gregory-Leibniz series:[21]
While that series is easy to write and calculate, it is not immediately obvious why it yields π.
In addition, this series converges so slowly that 300 terms are not sufficient to calculate π
correctly to 2 decimal places.[22] However, by computing this series in a somewhat more
clever way by taking the midpoints of partial sums, it can be made to converge much faster.
Let
and then define
then computing π10,10 will take similar computation time to computing 150 terms of the
original series in a brute-force manner, and , correct to 9 decimal places. This computation is
an example of the van Wijngaarden transformation.[23]
History
See also: Chronology of computation of π and Numerical approximations of π
The history of π parallels the development of mathematics as a whole.[24] Some authors divide
progress into three periods: the ancient period during which π was studied geometrically, the
classical era following the development of calculus in Europe around the 17th century, and
the age of digital computers.[25]
Geometrical period
That the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is the same for all circles, and
that it is slightly more than 3, was known to ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian and Greek
geometers. The earliest known approximations date from around 1900 BC; they are 25/8
(Babylonia) and 256/81 (Egypt), both within 1% of the true value.[3] The Indian text
Shatapatha Brahmana gives π as 339/108 ≈ 3.139. The Hebrew Bible appears to suggest, in
the Book of Kings, that π = 3, which is notably worse than other estimates available at the
time of writing (600 BC). The interpretation of the passage is disputed,[26][27] as some believe
the ratio of 3:1 is of an interior circumference to an exterior diameter of a thinly walled basin,
which could indeed be an accurate ratio, depending on the thickness of the walls (See:
Biblical value of π).
Archimedes (287–212 BC) was the first to estimate π rigorously. He realized that its
magnitude can be bounded from below and above by inscribing circles in regular polygons
and calculating the outer and inner polygons' respective perimeters:[27]
Liu Hui's π algorithm
By using the equivalent of 96-sided polygons, he proved that 223/71 < π < 22/7.[27] Taking the
average of these values yields 3.1419.
In the following centuries further development took place in India and China. Around AD
265, the Wei Kingdom mathematician Liu Hui provided a simple and rigorous iterative
algorithm to calculate π to any degree of accuracy. He himself carried through the calculation
to a 3072-gon and obtained an approximate value for π of 3.1416.
Later, Liu Hui invented a quick method of calculating π and obtained an approximate value
of 3.1416 with only a 96-gon, by taking advantage of the fact that the difference in area of
successive polygons forms a geometric series with a factor of 4.
Around 480, the Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi demonstrated that π ≈ 355/113, and
showed that 3.1415926 < π < 3.1415927 using Liu Hui's algorithm applied to a 12288-gon.
This value was the most accurate approximation of π available for the next 900 years.
Classical period
Until the second millennium, π was known to fewer than 10 decimal digits. The next major
advance in π studies came with the development of calculus, and in particular the discovery
of infinite series which in principle permit calculating π to any desired accuracy by adding
sufficiently many terms. Around 1400, Madhava of Sangamagrama found the first known
such series:
This is now known as the Madhava–Leibniz series[28][29] or Gregory-Leibniz series since it
was rediscovered by James Gregory and Gottfried Leibniz in the 17th century. Unfortunately,
the rate of convergence is too slow to calculate many digits in practice; about 4,000 terms
must be summed to improve upon Archimedes' estimate. However, by transforming the series
into
Madhava was able to calculate π as 3.14159265359, correct to 11 decimal places. The record
was beaten in 1424 by the Persian mathematician, Jamshīd al-Kāshī, who determined 16
decimals of π.
The first major European contribution since Archimedes was made by the German
mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen (1540–1610), who used a geometric method to compute
35 decimals of π. He was so proud of the calculation, which required the greater part of his
life, that he had the digits engraved into his tombstone.[30]
Around the same time, the methods of calculus and determination of infinite series and
products for geometrical quantities began to emerge in Europe. The first such representation
was the Viète's formula,
found by François Viète in 1593. Another famous result is Wallis' product,
by John Wallis in 1655. Isaac Newton himself derived a series for π and calculated 15 digits,
although he later confessed: "I am ashamed to tell you to how many figures I carried these
computations, having no other business at the time."[31]
In 1706 John Machin was the first to compute 100 decimals of π, using the formula
with
Formulas of this type, now known as Machin-like formulas, were used to set several
successive records and remained the best known method for calculating π well into the age of
computers. A remarkable record was set by the calculating prodigy Zacharias Dase, who in
1844 employed a Machin-like formula to calculate 200 decimals of π in his head at the behest
of Gauss. The best value at the end of the 19th century was due to William Shanks, who took
15 years to calculate π with 707 digits, although due to a mistake only the first 527 were
correct. (To avoid such errors, modern record calculations of any kind are often performed
twice, with two different formulas. If the results are the same, they are likely to be correct.)
Theoretical advances in the 18th century led to insights about π's nature that could not be
achieved through numerical calculation alone. Johann Heinrich Lambert proved the
irrationality of π in 1761, and Adrien-Marie Legendre also proved in 1794 π2 to be irrational.
When Leonhard Euler in 1735 solved the famous Basel problem – finding the exact value of
which is π2/6, he established a deep connection between π and the prime numbers. Both
Legendre and Leonhard Euler speculated that π might be transcendental, which was finally
proved in 1882 by Ferdinand von Lindemann.
William Jones' book A New Introduction to Mathematics from 1706 is said to be the first use
of the Greek letter π for this constant, but the notation became particularly popular after
Leonhard Euler adopted it in 1737.[32] He wrote:
There are various other ways of finding the Lengths or Areas of particular Curve Lines, or Planes,
which may very much facilitate the Practice; as for instance, in the Circle, the Diameter is to the
Circumference as 1 to (16/5 − 4/239) − 1/3(16/53 − 4/2393) + ... = 3.14159... = π[3]}}
See also: history of mathematical notation
Computation in the computer age
The advent of digital computers in the 20th century led to an increased rate of new π
calculation records. John von Neumann et. al. used ENIAC to compute 2037 digits of π in
1949, a calculation that took 70 hours. [33][34] Additional thousands of decimal places were
obtained in the following decades, with the million-digit milestone passed in 1973. Progress
was not only due to faster hardware, but also new algorithms. One of the most significant
developments was the discovery of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) in the 1960s, which
allows computers to perform arithmetic on extremely large numbers quickly.
In the beginning of the 20th century, the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan found
many new formulas for π, some remarkable for their elegance and mathematical depth.[35]
One of his formulas is the series,
and the related one found by the Chudnovsky brothers in 1987,
which deliver 14 digits per term.[35] The Chudnovskys used this formula to set several π
computing records in the end of the 1980s, including the first calculation of over one billion
(1,011,196,691) decimals in 1989. It remains the formula of choice for π calculating software
that runs on personal computers, as opposed to the supercomputers used to set modern
records.
Whereas series typically increase the accuracy with a fixed amount for each added term, there
exist iterative algorithms that multiply the number of correct digits at each step, with the
downside that each step generally requires an expensive calculation. A breakthrough was
made in 1975, when Richard Brent and Eugene Salamin independently discovered the Brent–
Salamin algorithm, which uses only arithmetic to double the number of correct digits at each
step.[36] The algorithm consists of setting
and iterating
until an and bn are close enough. Then the estimate for π is given by
Using this scheme, 25 iterations suffice to reach 45 million correct decimals. A similar
algorithm that quadruples the accuracy in each step has been found by Jonathan and Peter
Borwein.[37] The methods have been used by Yasumasa Kanada and team to set most of the π
calculation records since 1980, up to a calculation of 206,158,430,000 decimals of π in 1999.
The current record is 1,241,100,000,000 decimals, set by Kanada and team in 2002. Although
most of Kanada's previous records were set using the Brent-Salamin algorithm, the 2002
calculation made use of two Machin-like formulas that were slower but crucially reduced
memory consumption. The calculation was performed on a 64-node Hitachi supercomputer
with 1 terabyte of main memory, capable of carrying out 2 trillion operations per second.
An important recent development was the Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula (BBP formula),
discovered by Simon Plouffe and named after the authors of the paper in which the formula
was first published, David H. Bailey, Peter Borwein, and Plouffe.[38] The formula,
is remarkable because it allows extracting any individual hexadecimal or binary digit of π
without calculating all the preceding ones.[38] Between 1998 and 2000, the distributed
computing project PiHex used a modification of the BBP formula due to Fabrice Bellard to
compute the quadrillionth (1,000,000,000,000,000:th) bit of π, which turned out to be 0.[39]
In 2006, Simon Plouffe, using the integer relation algorithm PSLQ, found a series of
beautiful formulas.[40] Let q = eπ, then
and others of form,
where q = eπ, k is an odd number, and a, b, c are rational numbers. If k is of the form 4m + 3,
then the formula has the particularly simple form,
for some rational number p where the denominator is a highly factorable number, though no
rigorous proof has yet been given.
Memorizing digits
Main article: Piphilology
Recent decades have seen a surge in the record for number of digits memorized.
Even long before computers have calculated π, memorizing a record number of digits became
an obsession for some people. In 2006, Akira Haraguchi, a retired Japanese engineer, claimed
to have recited 100,000 decimal places.[41] This, however, has yet to be verified by Guinness
World Records. The Guinness-recognized record for remembered digits of π is 67,890 digits,
held by Lu Chao, a 24-year-old graduate student from China.[42] It took him 24 hours and 4
minutes to recite to the 67,890th decimal place of π without an error.[43]
There are many ways to memorize π, including the use of "piems", which are poems that
represent π in a way such that the length of each word (in letters) represents a digit. Here is an
example of a piem, originally devised by Sir James Jeans: How I need (or: want) a drink,
alcoholic in nature (or: of course), after the heavy lectures (or: chapters) involving quantum
mechanics.[44][45] Notice how the first word has 3 letters, the second word has 1, the third has
4, the fourth has 1, the fifth has 5, and so on. The Cadaeic Cadenza contains the first 3834
digits of π in this manner.[46] Piems are related to the entire field of humorous yet serious
study that involves the use of mnemonic techniques to remember the digits of π, known as
piphilology. In other languages there are similar methods of memorization. However, this
method proves inefficient for large memorizations of π. Other methods include remembering
patterns in the numbers.[47]
Advanced properties
Numerical approximations
Main article: History of numerical approximations of π
Due to the transcendental nature of π, there are no closed form expressions for the number in
terms of algebraic numbers and functions.[11] Formulas for calculating π using elementary
arithmetic typically include series or summation notation (such as "..."), which indicates that
the formula is really a formula for an infinite sequence of approximations to π.[48] The more
terms included in a calculation, the closer to π the result will get.
Consequently, numerical calculations must use approximations of π. For many purposes, 3.14
or 22/7 is close enough, although engineers often use 3.1416 (5 significant figures) or 3.14159
(6 significant figures) for more precision. The approximations 22/7 and 355/113, with 3 and 7
significant figures respectively, are obtained from the simple continued fraction expansion of
π. The approximation 355⁄113 (3.1415929…) is the best one that may be expressed with a three-
digit or four-digit numerator and denominator.[49][50][51]
The earliest numerical approximation of π is almost certainly the value 3.[27] In cases where
little precision is required, it may be an acceptable substitute. That 3 is an underestimate
follows from the fact that it is the ratio of the perimeter of an inscribed regular hexagon to the
diameter of the circle.
Open questions
The most pressing open question about π is whether it is a normal number—whether any digit
block occurs in the expansion of π just as often as one would statistically expect if the digits
had been produced completely "randomly", and that this is true in every base, not just base
10.[52] Current knowledge on this point is very weak; e.g., it is not even known which of the
digits 0,…,9 occur infinitely often in the decimal expansion of π.[53]
Bailey and Crandall showed in 2000 that the existence of the above mentioned Bailey-
Borwein-Plouffe formula and similar formulas imply that the normality in base 2 of π and
various other constants can be reduced to a plausible conjecture of chaos theory.[54]
It is also unknown whether π and e are algebraically independent, although Yuri Nesterenko
proved the algebraic independence of {π, eπ, Γ(1/4)} in 1996.[55]
Use in mathematics and science
Main article: List of formulas involving π
π is ubiquitous in mathematics, appearing even in places that lack an obvious connection to
the circles of Euclidean geometry.[56]
Geometry and trigonometry
See also: Area of a disk
For any circle with radius r and diameter d = 2r, the circumference is πd and the area is πr2.
Further, π appears in formulas for areas and volumes of many other geometrical shapes based
on circles, such as ellipses, spheres, cones, and tori.[57] Accordingly, π appears in definite
integrals that describe circumference, area or volume of shapes generated by circles. In the
basic case, half the area of the unit disk is given by:[58]
and
gives half the circumference of the unit circle.[57] More complicated shapes can be integrated
as solids of revolution.[59]
From the unit-circle definition of the trigonometric functions also follows that the sine and
cosine have period 2π. That is, for all x and integers n, sin(x) = sin(x + 2πn) and cos(x) =
cos(x + 2πn). Because sin(0) = 0, sin(2πn) = 0 for all integers n. Also, the angle measure of
180° is equal to π radians. In other words, 1° = (π/180) radians.
In modern mathematics, π is often defined using trigonometric functions, for example as the
smallest positive x for which sin x = 0, to avoid unnecessary dependence on the subtleties of
Euclidean geometry and integration. Equivalently, π can be defined using the inverse
trigonometric functions, for example as π = 2 arccos(0) or π = 4 arctan(1). Expanding inverse
trigonometric functions as power series is the easiest way to derive infinite series for π.
Complex numbers and calculus
The frequent appearance of π in complex analysis can be related to the behavior of the
exponential function of a complex variable, described by Euler's formula
where i is the imaginary unit satisfying i2 = −1 and e ≈ 2.71828 is Euler's number. This
formula implies that imaginary powers of e describe rotations on the unit circle in the
complex plane; these rotations have a period of 360° = 2π. In particular, the 180° rotation φ =
π results in the remarkable Euler's identity
There are n different n-th roots of unity
The Gaussian integral
A consequence is that the gamma function of a half-integer is a rational multiple of √π.
Physics
Although not a physical constant, π appears routinely in equations describing fundamental
principles of the Universe, due in no small part to its relationship to the nature of the circle
and, correspondingly, spherical coordinate systems. Using units such as Planck units can
sometimes eliminate π from formulae.
• The cosmological constant:[60]
• Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which shows that the uncertainty in the
measurement of a particle's position (Δx) and momentum (Δp) can not both be
arbitrarily small at the same time:[61]
• Einstein's field equation of general relativity:[62]
• Coulomb's law for the electric force, describing the force between two electric
charges (q1 and q2) separated by distance r:[63]
• Magnetic permeability of free space:[64]
• Kepler's third law constant, relating the orbital period (P) and the semimajor axis (a)
to the masses (M and m) of two co-orbiting bodies:
Probability and statistics
In probability and statistics, there are many distributions whose formulas contain π,
including:
• the probability density function for the normal distribution with mean μ and standard
deviation σ, due to the Gaussian integral:[65]
• the probability density function for the (standard) Cauchy distribution:[66]
Note that since for any probability density function f(x), the above formulas can be used to
produce other integral formulas for π.[67]
Buffon's needle problem is sometimes quoted as a empirical approximation of π in "popular
mathematics" works. Consider dropping a needle of length L repeatedly on a surface
containing parallel lines drawn S units apart (with S > L). If the needle is dropped n times and
x of those times it comes to rest crossing a line (x > 0), then one may approximate π using the
Monte Carlo method:[68][69][70][71]
Though this result is mathematically impeccable, it cannot be used to determine more than
very few digits of π by experiment. Reliably getting just three digits (including the initial "3")
right requires millions of throws,[68] and the number of throws grows exponentially with the
number of digits desired. Furthermore, any error in the measurement of the lengths L and S
will transfer directly to an error in the approximated π. For example, a difference of a single
atom in the length of a 10-centimeter needle would show up around the 9th digit of the result.
In practice, uncertainties in determining whether the needle actually crosses a line when it
appears to exactly touch it will limit the attainable accuracy to much less than 9 digits.
Pi in popular culture

A whimsical "Pi plate".

Probably because of the simplicity of its definition, the concept of pi and, especially its
decimal expression, have become entrenched in popular culture to a degree far greater than
almost any other mathematical construct.[72] It is, perhaps, the most common ground between
mathematicians and non-mathematicians.[73] Reports on the latest, most-precise calculation of
π (and related stunts) are common news items.[74] Pi Day (March 14, from 3.14) is observed in
many schools.[75] At least one cheer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology includes
"3.14159!"[76] One can buy a "Pi plate": a pie dish with both "π" and a decimal expression of
it appearing on it.[77]
See also
• The Feynman point, a sequence of six 9s that appears at the 762nd through 767th
decimal places of π
• Indiana Pi Bill
• List of topics related to π
• Mathematical constants: e and φ
• Pi Day
• Proof that 22/7 exceeds π
• Software for calculating π on personal computers
• SOCR resource hands-on activity for estimation of π using needle-dropping
simulation.
References
1. ^ Howard Whitley Eves (1969). An Introduction to the History of Mathematics. Holt,
Rinehart & Winston.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LIsuAAAAIAAJ&q=%22important+numbers+in+mathe
matics%22&dq=%22important+numbers+in+mathematics%22&pgis=1.
2. ^ Comanor, Milton; Ralph P. Boas (1976). "Pi". in William D. Halsey. Collier's Encyclopedia.
19. New York: Macmillan Educational Corporation. pp. 21-22.
3. ^ a b c d e "About Pi". Ask Dr. Math FAQ. http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.pi.html.
Retrieved on 2007-10-29.
4. ^ "Characters Ordered by Unicode". W3C. http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/bycodes.html.
Retrieved on 2007-10-25.
5. ^ Richmond, Bettina (1999-01-12). "Area of a Circle". Western Kentucky University.
http://www.wku.edu/~tom.richmond/Pir2.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
6. ^ Rudin, Walter (1976) [1953]. Principles of Mathematical Analysis (3e ed.). McGraw-Hill.
pp. 183. ISBN 0-07-054235-X.
7. ^ Lambert, Johann Heinrich (1761), "Mémoire sur quelques propriétés remarquables des
quantités transcendentes circulaires et logarithmiques", Histoire de l'Académie, (Berlin)
XVII: 265–322, 1768
8. ^ Niven, Ivan (1947). "A simple proof that π is irrational" (PDF). Bulletin of the American
Mathematical Society 53 (6): 509. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1947-08821-2.
http://www.ams.org/bull/1947-53-06/S0002-9904-1947-08821-2/S0002-9904-1947-08821-
2.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
9. ^ Richter, Helmut (1999-07-28). "Pi Is Irrational". Leibniz Rechenzentrum. http://www.lrz-
muenchen.de/~hr/numb/pi-irr.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
10.^ Jeffreys, Harold (1973). Scientific Inference (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
11.^ a b Mayer, Steve. "The Transcendence of π".
http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/way/po28/maths/docs/pi.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
12.^ "Squaring the Circle". cut-the-knot. http://www.cut-the-knot.org/impossible/sq_circle.shtml.
Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
13.^ A000796: Decimal expansion of Pi, On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences
14.^ "Current publicized world record of pi". http://www.super-computing.org/pi_current.html.
Retrieved on 2007-10-14.
15.^ Young, Robert M. (1992). Excursions in Calculus. Washington: Mathematical Association
of America (MAA). pp. 417. ISBN 0883853175.
http://books.google.com/books?id=iEMmV9RWZ4MC&pg=PA238&dq=intitle:Excursions+i
ntitle:in+intitle:Calculus+39+digits&lr=&as_brr=0&ei=AeLrSNKJOYWQtAPdt5DeDQ&sig
=ACfU3U0NSYsF9kVp6om4Zyw3a7F82QCofQ.
16.^ "Statistical estimation of pi using random vectors".
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=AJPIAS000067000004
000298000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes. Retrieved on 2007-08-12.
17.^ Eric W. Weisstein, Pi Digits at MathWorld.
18.^ Boutin, Chad (2005-04-26). "Pi seems a good random number generator - but not always
the best". Purdue University.
http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2005/050426.Fischbach.pi.html. Retrieved on 2007-
11-04.
19.^ Groleau, Rick (09-2003). "Infinite Secrets: Approximating Pi". NOVA.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/archimedes/pi.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
20.^ Beckmann, Petr (1989). A History of Pi. Barnes & Noble Publishing. ISBN 0880294183.
21.^ Eymard, Pierre; Jean-Pierre Lafon (02 2004). "2.6". The Number π. Stephen S. Wilson
(translator). American Mathematical Society. pp. 53. ISBN 0821832468.
http://books.google.com/books?id=qZcCSskdtwcC&pg=PA53&dq=leibniz+pi&ei=uFsuR5fO
AZTY7QLqouDpCQ&sig=k8VlN5VTxcX9a6Ewc71OCGe_5jk. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
22.^ Lampret, Spanish, Vito (2006). "Even from Gregory-Leibniz series π could be computed: an
example of how convergence of series can be accelerated" (PDF). Lecturas Mathematicas 27:
21–25. http://www.scm.org.co/Articulos/832.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
23.^ A. van Wijngaarden, in: Cursus: Wetenschappelijk Rekenen B, Process Analyse, Stichting
Mathematisch Centrum, (Amsterdam, 1965) pp. 51–60.
24.^ Beckmann, Petr (1976). A History of π. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN 0-312-38185-9.
25.^ "Archimedes' constant π". http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/Pi/pi.html.
Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
26.^ Aleff, H. Peter. "Ancient Creation Stories told by the Numbers: Solomon's Pi".
recoveredscience.com. http://www.recoveredscience.com/const303solomonpi.htm. Retrieved
on 2007-10-30.
27.^ a b c d O'Connor, J J; E F Robertson (2001-08). "A history of Pi". http://www-groups.dcs.st-
and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Pi_through_the_ages.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
28.^ George E. Andrews, Richard Askey, Ranjan Roy (1999), Special Functions, Cambridge
University Press, p. 58, ISBN 0521789885
29.^ Gupta, R. C. (1992), "On the remainder term in the Madhava-Leibniz's series", Ganita
Bharati 14 (1-4): 68–71
30.^ Charles Hutton (1811). Mathematical Tables; Containing the Common, Hyperbolic, and
Logistic Logarithms.... London: Rivington. pp. p.13.
http://books.google.com/books?id=zDMAAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA13&dq=snell+descartes+date
:0-1837&lr=&as_brr=1&ei=rqPgR7yeNqiwtAPDvNEV.
31.^ The New York Times: Even Mathematicians Can Get Carried Away
32.^ "About: William Jones". Famous Welsh.
http://www.famousWelsh.com/cgibin/getmoreinf.cgi?pers_id=737. Retrieved on 2007-10-27.
33.^ "An {ENIAC} Determination of pi and e to more than 2000 Decimal Places", Mathematical
Tables and Other Aids to Computation, 4 (29), pp. 11–15. (January,1950)
34.^ "Statistical Treatment of Values of First 2,000 Decimal Digits of e and of pi Calculated on
the ENIAC", Mathematical Tables and Other Aids to Computation, 4 (30), pp. 109–111.
(April,1950)
35.^ a b "The constant π: Ramanujan type formulas".
http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/Pi/piramanujan.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
36.^ Brent, Richard (1975), Traub, J F, ed., "Multiple-precision zero-finding methods and the
complexity of elementary function evaluation", Analytic Computational Complexity (New
York: Academic Press): 151–176, http://wwwmaths.anu.edu.au/~brent/pub/pub028.html,
retrieved on 2007-09-08
37.^ Borwein, Jonathan M; Borwein, Peter, Berggren, Lennart (2004). Pi: A Source Book.
Springer. ISBN 0387205713.
38.^ a b Bailey, David H., Borwein, Peter B., and Plouffe, Simon (April 1997). "On the Rapid
Computation of Various Polylogarithmic Constants" (PDF). Mathematics of Computation 66
(218): 903–913. doi:10.1090/S0025-5718-97-00856-9.
http://crd.lbl.gov/~dhbailey/dhbpapers/digits.pdf.
39.^ Bellard, Fabrice. "A new formula to compute the nth binary digit of pi".
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/pi/pi_bin/pi_bin.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-27.
40.^ Plouffe, Simon. "Indentities inspired by Ramanujan's Notebooks (part 2)".
http://www.lacim.uqam.ca/~plouffe/inspired2.pdf. Retrieved on 2009-4-10.
41.^ Otake, Tomoko (2006-12-17). "How can anyone remember 100,000 numbers?". The Japan
Times. http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/fl20061217x1.html. Retrieved on 2007-10-27.
42.^ "Pi World Ranking List". http://www.pi-world-ranking-list.com/news/index.htm. Retrieved
on 2007-10-27.
43.^ "Chinese student breaks Guiness record by reciting 67,890 digits of pi". News Guangdong.
2006-11-28. http://www.newsgd.com/culture/peopleandlife/200611280032.htm. Retrieved on
2007-10-27.
44.^ Weisstein, Eric W. "Pi Wordplay." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. Retrieved
on 2009-03-12.
45.^ Borwein, Jonathan M (2005-09-25). "The Life of Pi: From Archimedes to Eniac and
Beyond" (PDF). Dalhousie University Computer Science. http://users.cs.dal.ca/~jborwein/pi-
culture.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-10-29.
46.^ Keith, Mike (1996). "Cadaeic Cadenza: Solution & Commentary".
http://users.aol.com/s6sj7gt/solution.htm. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
47.^ Liu, Yicong (2004-05-19). "Oh my, memorizing so many digits of pi.". Silver Chips Online.
http://silverchips.mbhs.edu/inside.php?sid=3577. Retrieved on 2007-11-04.
48.^ Weisstein, Eric W (2007-09-27). "Pi Formulas". MathWorld.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PiFormulas.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
49.^ 韩雪涛 (2001-08-29). "数学科普：常识性谬误流传令人忧" (in Chinese). 中华读书
报. http://www.xys.org/~xys/xys/ebooks/others/science/dajia/shuxuekepu.txt. Retrieved on
2006-10-06.
50.^ "Magic of 355 ÷ 113". Kaidy Educational Resources. http://www.kaidy.com/PiReward.htm.
Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
51.^ Gourdon, Xavier; Pascal Sebah. "Collection of approximations for π". Numbers, constants
and computation. http://numbers.computation.free.fr/Constants/Pi/piApprox.html. Retrieved
on 2007-11-08.
52.^ Weisstein, Eric W (2005-12-22). "Normal Number". MathWorld.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NormalNumber.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
53.^ Preuss, Paul (2001-07-23). "Are The Digits of Pi Random? Lab Researcher May Hold The
Key". Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. http://www.lbl.gov/Science-
Articles/Archive/pi-random.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
54.^ Peterson, Ivars (2001-09-01). "Pi à la Mode: Mathematicians tackle the seeming
randomness of pi's digits". Science News Online.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010901/bob9.asp. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
55.^ Nesterenko, Yuri V (1996). "Modular Functions and Transcendence Problems". Comptes
rendus de l'Académie des sciences Série 1 322 (10): 909–914.
56.^ "Japanese breaks pi memory record". BBC News. 2005-07-02.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4644103.stm. Retrieved on 2007-10-30.
57.^ a b "Area and Circumference of a Circle by Archimedes". Penn State.
http://www.math.psu.edu/courses/maserick/circle/circleapplet.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
58.^ Weisstein, Eric W (2006-01-28). "Unit Disk Integral". MathWorld.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/UnitDiskIntegral.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
59.^ Weisstein, Eric W (2006-05-04). "Solid of Revolution". MathWorld.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SolidofRevolution.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
60.^ Miller, Cole. "The Cosmological Constant" (PDF). University of Maryland.
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~miller/teaching/astr422/lecture12.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
61.^ Imamura, James M (2005-08-17). "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle". University of
Oregon. http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/208/jan27/hup.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-09.
 62.^ Einstein, Albert (1916). "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" (PDF).
Annalen der Physik. http://www.alberteinstein.info/gallery/gtext3.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-
09.
63.^ Nave, C. Rod (2005-06-28). "Coulomb's Constant". HyperPhysics. Georgia State
University. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/elefor.html#c3. Retrieved on
2007-11-09.
64.^ "Magnetic constant". NIST. 2006 CODATA recommended values.
http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?mu0. Retrieved on 2007-11-09.
65.^ Weisstein, Eric W (2004-10-07). "Gaussian Integral". MathWorld.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GaussianIntegral.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
66.^ Weisstein, Eric W (2005-10-11). "Cauchy Distribution". MathWorld.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/CauchyDistribution.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
67.^ Weisstein, Eric W (2003-07-02). "Probability Function". MathWorld.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ProbabilityFunction.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-08.
68.^ a b Weisstein, Eric W (2005-12-12). "Buffon's Needle Problem". MathWorld.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BuffonsNeedleProblem.html. Retrieved on 2007-11-10.
69.^ Bogomolny, Alex (2001-08). "Math Surprises: An Example". cut-the-knot. http://www.cut-
the-knot.org/ctk/August2001.shtml. Retrieved on 2007-10-28.
70.^ Ramaley, J. F. (October 1969). "Buffon's Noodle Problem". The American Mathematical
Monthly 76 (8): 916–918. doi:10.2307/2317945.
71.^ "The Monte Carlo algorithm/method". datastructures. 2007-01-09.
http://www.datastructures.info/the-monte-carlo-algorithmmethod/. Retrieved on 2007-11-07.
72.^ See, e.g, Lennart Berggren, Jonathan M. Borwein, and Peter B. Borwein (eds.), Pi: A
Source Book. Springer, 1999 (2nd ed.). ISBN 978-0-387-98946-4.
73.^ See Alfred S. Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann, Pi: A Biography of the World's Most
Mysterious Number. Prometheus Books, 2004. ISBN 978-1-59102-200-8.
74.^ E.g., MSNBC, Man recites pi from memory to 83,431 places July 3, 2005; Matt Schudel,
Obituaries: "John W. Wrench, Jr.: Mathematician Had a Taste for Pi" The Washington Post,
March 25, 2009, p. B5.
75.^ Pi Day activities.
76.^ MIT, E to the U.
77.^ Signals, The Pi Dish. Accessed 2009.01.27.

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pi
• Joyas The Joy of Pi, by David Blatner; links, odd facts, and other material
• A000796 Decimal expansions of Pi and related links at the On-Line Encyclopedia of
Integer Sequences
• J J O'Connor and E F Robertson: A history of pi. Mac Tutor project
• Lots of formulas for π at MathWorld
• PlanetMath: Pi
• Finding the value of π
• Determination of π at cut-the-knot
• BBC Radio Program about π
 • Statistical Distribution Information on PI based on 1.2 trillion digits of PI
• The Digits of Pi — First ten thousand
• First 4 Million Digits of π - Warning - Roughly 2 megabytes will be transferred.
• One million digits of pi at piday.org
• Project Gutenberg E-Text containing a million digits of π
• Search the first 200 million digits of π for arbitrary strings of numbers
• π is Wrong! An opinion column on why 2π is more useful in mathematics.
• 100 Billion digits of Pi(π) downloads.
• 1 Billion digits of Pi
• The first 16 million digits of Pi (18 mb .txt file)
• Online search tool to find any number sequence within the 2 billion digits of Pi
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi"
Categories: Pi | Transcendental numbers | Mathematical constants | Dimensionless numbers |
Ratios
Hidden categories: Wikipedia semi-protected pages
Views
• Article
• Discussion
• View source
• History
Personal tools
• Log in / create account
Navigation
• Main page
• Contents
• Featured content
• Current events
• Random article
Search

Special:Search Go Search

Interaction
• About Wikipedia
• Community portal
• Recent changes
• Contact Wikipedia
• Donate to Wikipedia
• Help
Toolbox
• What links here
• Related changes
• Upload file
• Special pages
• Printable version
• Permanent link
• Cite this page
Languages
• Afrikaans
• Alemannisch
• ‫العربية‬
• Aragonés
• Asturianu
• Bân-lâm-gú
• বাংলা
• Беларуская
• Беларуская (тарашкевіца)
• Български
• Català
• Cebuano
• Česky
• Cymraeg
• Dansk
• Deutsch
• Eesti
• Ελληνικά
• Español
• Esperanto
• Euskara
• ‫فارسی‬
• Français
• Furlan
• Galego
• 贛語
• 한국어
• Hawai`i
• Hrvatski
• Bahasa Indonesia
• Interlingua
• Íslenska
• Italiano
• ‫עברית‬
• Basa Jawa
• ქართული
• Қазақша
• Kiswahili
• Kreyòl ayisyen
• Kurdî / ‫كوردی‬
• Latina
• Latviešu
• Lietuvių
• Limburgs
• Lumbaart
• Magyar
• Македонски
• മലയാളം
• मराठी
• ‫مصرى‬
• Bahasa Melayu
• Монгол
• Nederlands
• 日本語
• Norsk (bokmål)
• Norsk (nynorsk)
• O'zbek
• Plattdüütsch
• Polski
• Português
• Ripoarisch
• Română
• Runa Simi
• Русский
• Саха тыла
• Scots
• Shqip
• Sicilianu
• Simple English
• Slovenčina
• Slovenščina
• Ślůnski
• Српски / Srpski
• Srpskohrvatski / Српскохрватски
• Suomi
• Svenska
• Tagalog
• தமிழ
• తలగ
• ไทย
• Türkçe
• Українська
• ‫اردو‬
• Tiếng Việt
• 文言
• Winaray
• 吴语
• Yorùbá
• 粵語
• Žemaitėška
• 中文
• This page was last modified on 25 May 2009, at 12:20 (UTC).
• All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See
Copyrights for details.)
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S.
registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity.
• Privacy policy
• About Wikipedia
• Disclaimers