22/7
A little bigger
I'm bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
I've circumscribed too much
I messed it up
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my precision
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
I've circumscribed too much
I'm not precise enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you say
"I don't think you are good enough"
Every minute
Of every waking hour I'm
Doing long division
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like an obsessive rational
I've circumscribed too much
I messed it up
Consider this
Three thirty nine and one-oh-eight
Consider this
Three thousand nine twenty seven
And twelve fifty
What if all these rationals
Are converging around
Now I've said too much
I thought that I saw you rounding
I thought that I heard you say
"I think we've got it good enough"
Three point one four three
Three point one four three
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my precision
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
I've circumscribed too much
I'm not precise enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you say
"I don't think you are good enough"
Three point one four two
Eight five seven one
Three point one four three
One four three
One four three
Three
__________
This is how these mathematicians came up with the pi estimation:
- Egyptians- The Great Pyramid of Giza was built between 2550 and 2500 BC. Amazingly, it has a perimeter measuring 1760 cubits and a height of 280 cubits, which gives a ratio of 1760/280 i.e, approximate 2 times of pi. Note: Cubit was a non-standard of measurement, which is about 18 inches,and it measured forearm length till the tip of the elbow.
- Evidences state that pi dates back to 1900 BC. Both the Babylonians and the Egyptians had made estimation of pi. The Babylonians estimated pi to be 25/8 (3.125), while the Egyptians estimated pi to be 256/81 (3.16).
- Archimedes' Polygons- The Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse is widely known to bring the first calculation on accurate pi value estimation. He did it so by finding the areas of two polygons: the polygon that was inscribed inside a circle and the polygon that occupies the circle. Though he did not calculate the pi value exactly. but it has a close approximation: he used 96 sided polygon to come up with a value which lies between 3.1408 and 3.14285.
Archimedes' Polygon - Chinese mathematician Zhu Chongzhi (Ad 429-500) used a similar method to approximate the value of pi using a 12,288 sided polygon. Approximation= 355/113 (3.141592920353982).
- In the 15th century, Indian mathematician Madhavan of Sangamagramam discovered Madhava-Leibniz series, which is named after German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, who rediscovered the series in the 17th century. It is an infinite series that converges to four. Madhavan subsequently calculated pi to 11 decimal places.
- In 1707, Welsh mathematician William Jones was the first person to use the Greek letter pi (π) to denote the constant ratio, although it wasn't until 1737 that Swiss mathematician and physicist Leonhard Euler popularized the symbol's use. The π was taken from the Greek word for perimeter.
- Shigeru Kondo carried out the longest calculation of pi to date on October 19, 2011.
- The most accurate calculation of pi before the advent of the computer was by D.F. Ferguson, who was the person to calculate pi upto 620 digits in 1945 (previously, William Shanks had calculated pi to 707 digits in 1874, alas! only 527 of the digits he estimated were correct.)
- Takahashi Kanada had calculated the value of pi upto 206158430000 digits in 1999 with Hitachi SR8000.
- Aryabhatta of ancient India worked on the estimation of pi and finally ended up by proving pi is irrational and brought the most accurate pi value (3.16).
Okay, then. What is your way of estimating the value of pi? Drop it in the comment section.
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