The first mathematician to calculate pi with reasonable accuracy was Archimedes, around 250 B.C. Using the formula: A = pi r^2 for the area of a circle, he approximated pi by considering regular polygons with many sides inscribed in and circumscribed around a circle. Archimedes showed that pi is between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71. When Newton and Leibnitz developed calculus in the late seventeenth century, most famous of this is Machin’s formula: pi/4 = 4 arctan (1/5) - arctan (1/239). This formula and similar ones were use to push the accuracy of approximations to pi to over 500 decimal places by the early eighteenth century (this was all hand calculations!)

In the twentieth century there have been two important developments: the invention of electronic computers and the discovery of much more powerful formulas for pi. For example, in 1910 the great Indian mathematician Ramanujan discovered a formula that in 1985 was used to compute pi to 17 million digits. Other even better methods have been developed since, and computers are getting even more powerful. The current record is about 51 billion decimal places.

In mathematics, the ratio of the circumference (circumference is the measurement from one point to the same point on the outside of a circle to its diameter.) An irrational number, (see also transcendental number) its approximate value is 3.14159265, but its exact value must be represented by a symbol, the Greek letter p.

Pi is used in calculations involving lengths, areas, and volumes of circles, spheres, cylinders and cones. It also arises frequently in problems dealing with certain periodic phenomena (and in my case an easy) (e.g., motion of pendulums, alternating electric currents.) To make such calculations precise, modern computers have carried pi to more than a hundred million decimal places

Registered Members, login
Join now, it's free

Property of EssaySwap.com