Pi, the mathematical term for the number 3.141592654¡K or when spoken out loud, dozing math students are rudely awakened to think that their teacher is serving pie. Seriously though, Other than the score of last nights braves game or how many home runs Barry Bonds has hit, pi is probably the most talked about number in the mathematical world. ¡§The computation of pi is virtually the only topic from the most ancient stratum of mathematics that is still of serious interest to modern mathematics research¡¨(Berggren 6). How can a problem as simple as dividing a circle¡¦s circumference by its diameter, intrigue mathematicians for over four thousand years? The symbol, it¡¦s history and applications in today¡¦s world all help us to have a better understanding for the area of a circle.
The Rhind Papyrus, that dates back to 1650 BC, is the earliest form of this ratio. Written by an Egyptian scribe named Ahmes. His findings put him approximately one percent away from finding the true value of pi (Blatner, 8). The formula
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5 billion decimal place by the end of this year. Bouyer found the one-millionth digit of pi in 1973. (Beckmann, 61) ¡§Even when people can¡¦t remember exactly what ƒà signifies, they recognize the symbol¡¨ (Blatner, 75). The use of the symbol for pi was not formally used until 1706, when William Jones published his book Synopsis palmariorum matheseos. Pi was now being used to test the speed and accuracy of new computers. The first mathematician to use the symbol was William Oughtred, in 1652. The Babylonians and Hebrews simply used the value three for the ratio between circumference and diameter, which to our standards isn¡¦t even close. Even after Viete, Ludolf van Ceulen calculated pi out to 35 decimal places, making it his life¡¦s quest. Using an inscribed polygon with as many as 24,576 sides found pi to be approximately 3. His measurement, accurate to ten decimal places, was the most precise in the history of pi (Doctor Math, 2000). By 1794, almost all mathematicians in Europe were using the symbol ƒà in the same way we do today (Blatner, 79).
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