Indiana far worse at Pi than Intel's 486SX

theinquirer.net/ ^

[chance33_98]

Indiana far worse at Pi than Intel's 486SX

Irrational numbers of our time

By Old Mother Chipton: Wednesday 07 May 2003, 12:24

HOWEVER BAD Intel's 486SX is/was at calculating the value of Pi, it appears that the US state of Indiana was far worse.

A bill passed in Indiana in 1897 apparently decided to plump on the value of Pi as 3.2, although various other numbers are suggested.

The Babylonians did better than 4000 years ago with 3.125, the Egyptian with 3.16045 although China seems to have thought it was three.

You can find the Indiana stuff here.

Here's a nice page about the story of Pi and current work on it.

Here's another page on it.

Here's our Hardware Roundup from yesterday.

And here's a piece by Esther Tigre suggesting that the value of Pi can crash your PC. µ

[chance33_98]

Meant to put this in General Interest (where, in this case, it will live longer!) can you slide it on over for me?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

3 is good enough for back of the envelope engineering.

[punster]

It's enough to make a mathematician pi-eyed.

[The Duke]

Indiana S(u)X?

[WSGilcrest]

Hiroyuki Goto, 21, the current world record holder for the most digits of Pi memorized, required over nine hours to recite 42000+ digits [Seattle Times, 2-26-95].

To recite all the known digits of Pi (6.4 billion digits) would take 133 years with no pause for coffee or sleep.

[WSGilcrest]

"Get your b%&ch a$$ back in the kitchen and make me some pie"

[old-ager]

A very interesting and readable book on the subject: History of Pi, Petr Beckman:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312381859/qid=1052366335/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-5477112-9100025

A review (at http://www.text-book.com/pages/cbook_reviews/003_historyofpi.html):

13 and zero both have their place in the seemingly opposing worlds of acadamia and superstition, but it is unlikely that any number has inspired so much study, discussion, and controversy as 3, presently followed by 6 billion decimal places (and counting).

Not that we need all of those places: Pi correct to ten places can calculate the circumference of the earth giving an error of about half a centimeter. Correct to 39 places, it can be used to calculatethe circumference of a circle surrounding the known universe with a resulting error of no more then the radius of a hydrogen atom.

Giants of mathematics from Archimedes to Ptolemy to Tsu Ch'ung-chih to Ramanujan have chased Pi, and it has continued to stretch further into infinity. It pops up constantly in nature, and has been incorporated into the dimensions of temples, tombs and pyramids.

Petr Beckman takes this big little number and uses it to draw an arc across human experience, illuminating both the math- ematical and social history reflected through the pursuit of Pi. Beckman's book takes us from Babylon and Pi's beginnings, through the middle ages, when men were burned for so much as speaking the word, up to the present day. He presents the prog- ress of Pi as paralell to the progress of mankind: Stalling when freedom was oppressed by religious fanaticism or martial tyranny, moving forward when intellectual pursuit of the unknown was fostered.

The math in the book is not especially difficult, as the book itself is as much an exploration of mathematics as it is an argument for freedom, of the spirit and flesh as well as mind. It is a noble argument in an entirely unique and engaging book.

[old-ager]

Sorry, my link to the review is bad. This should be better:
http://www.text-book.com/pages/cbook_reviews/003_historyofpi.html

[merak]

As I heard it, it was the pentium which had the floating point problems. I don't think the 486 sx even had a floating point chip in it; if you're doing your floating point in software and end up with wrong values for pi, you've only yourself to blame.

[chance33_98]

Will have to check it out, I think it was listed in my computer book club last month. Another good source is "Mathematics, from the birth of Numbers". I have quite a few books on number theory as well, though prime numbers are my main source of fun (though pi is of interest as well). Math is fun :)

[gcruse]

I learned a mnemonic to take pi out to twenty decimal points. It actually came in handy a few times...ok, at parties.