The story of Pi

So today I want to talk about Pi. Pi is one of the most commonly used, and at the same time, the most undervalued (pun intended) mathematical constant of all.

For those of you who skipped the 5th standard class, and pretty much every class after that, pi is a constant associated with a circle. It is defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It’s value remains the same for a circle of any size and for majority of people, it is 22/7, which you will discover later in this post, is it’s least accurate value. The more accurate value of pi is 3.14159265…

Now, with the boring stuff out of the way, let’s get into what makes pi so interesting, that it has it’s own fan club and why it is the object of fascination, even obsession, for all the mathematicians all over the world. Pi is an irrational number, meaning, it has no end. It is impossible to predict a number in a certain position of value. So, in theory, every combination of digits you can think of, is present in its value at a certain position. This includes your birthday, your anniversary, your phone’s lock code; so basically, any combination of numbers. There are many apps and websites which can find them for you.

This would be a good time to learn some fascinating facts :

• 3.14 backwards looks like PIE.

• Egyptologists and followers of mysticism have been fascinated for centuries by the fact that the Great Pyramid at Giza seems to approximate pi. The vertical height of the pyramid has the same relationship to the perimeter of its base as the radius of a circle has to its circumference.

• The record for discovering the most number of digits of pi belongs to Fabrice Bellard.  He calculated 2.7 trillion decimal places on just a desktop computer.

• March 14 is known as Pi Day because of its date: 3/14.  It is also the birthday of Albert Einstein, who was born in 1879.

• The Greek letter Ï€ was selected to describe pi in 1706 by William Jones, an English mathematician.

• It would take 12 billion digits of pi, typed in a normal-size font, to reach Kansas from New York City.

• When people want to measure ripples emanating from a central point, they use pi.

• The Guinness Book of World Records states that Lu Chao holds the world record for memorizing the most number of digits of pi.  He memorized 67,890 digits, which took him 24 hours and 4 minutes.

• The first 144 digits of pi add up to 666 (which many scholars say is “the mark of the Beast”). And 144 = (6+6) x (6+6).

• Since there are 360 degrees in a circle and pi is intimately connected with the circle, some mathematicians were delighted to discover that the number 360 is at the 359th digit position of pi.

• The Rhind Papyrus (c. 1650 B.C.) was the first attempt to calculate pi by “squaring the circle,” which is to measure the diameter of a circle by building a square inside the circle.

• The “squaring the circle” method of understanding pi has fascinated mathematicians because traditionally the circle represents the infinite, immeasurable, and even spiritual world while the square represents the manifest, measurable, and comprehensive world.

• Computing pi is a stress test for a computer—a kind of “digital cardiogram.”

• Al-Khwarizmi, who lived in Baghdad around A.D. 800, worked on a value of pi calculated to four digits: 3.1416. The term “algorithm” derives from his name, and his text Kitab al-Jabr wal-Muqabala (The Book of Completion Concerning Calculating by Transposition and Reduction) gives us the word “algebra” (from al-Jabr, which means “completion” or “restoration”).

• Ancient mathematicians tried to compute pi by inscribing polygons with more and more sides that would more closely approach the area of a circle. Archimedes used a 96-sided polygon. Chinese mathematician Liu Hui inscribed a 192-sided polygon and then a 3,072-sided polygon to calculate pi to 3.14159. Tsu Ch’ung and his son inscribed polygons with as many as 24,576 sides to calculate pi (the result had only an 8-millionth of 1% difference from the now accepted value of pi).

• Some scholars claim that humans are programmed to find patterns in the world because it’s the only way we can give meaning to the world and ourselves. Hence, the obsessive search to find patterns in π.

• In the seventeenth century, pi was freed from the circle and applied also to curves, such as arches and hypocycloids, when it was found that their areas could also be expressed in terms of pi. In the twentieth century, pi has been used in many areas, such as number theory, probability, and chaos theory.

• John Donne’s (1572-1631) poem “Upon the Translations of the Psalms by Sir Philip Sidney, and the Countess of Pembroke, His Sister” condemns attempts to find an exact value of pi, or to “square a circle,” which Donne views as an attempt to rationalize God: “Eternal God—for whom who ever dare Seek new expressions, do the circle square, And thrust into straight corners of poor wit Thee, who art cornerless and infinite—”.