According to a BBC news report, Pi has now been calculated to 2.7 trillion digits, 123 billion digits larger that last record.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8442255.stm

That's a lot of pi.

Myself, I like pumpkin pie.

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Wait... I thought they solved Pi a few years ago.

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Reuben Gathright wrote:

Wait... I thought they solved Pi a few years ago.

There's a solution?

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The only remaining question about pi is whether to cut it into 6 pieces or 8 pieces.

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Pi is an irrational number. It cannot be resolved, it is endless and non-repeating. Other irrational numbers are, for example, sqrt(2), e, the square root of any prime number. Irrational means it cannot be expressed as a ratio of two numbers.

I think the ancient Greeks "solved" pi many moons ago. It is exactly the ratio of the circumference of a perfect circle to its diameter. Problems start when we try to express that "exact solution" as a numerical value.

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Pi is an irrational number. It cannot be resolved, it is endless and non-repeating. Other irrational numbers are, for example, sqrt(2), e, the square root of any prime number. Irrational means it cannot be expressed as a ratio of two numbers.

No...Pi is fine. It is the people that are irrational

Hmmm... I wonder if the (calculated) length of Pi obeys Moore's law?

EDIT: And by the way, I can't stand pumpkins... ;)

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- Luke.

Seems to me that the size of Pi is unchanged, and so is the number of digits that have yet to be calculated.

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Seems to me that the size of Pi is unchanged, and so is the number of digits that have yet to be calculated.

Very true Ned. Should we be funding this research based on how much they decreased the number of remaining digits in the last budget cycle?

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Very true Ned. Should we be funding this research based on how much they decreased the number of remaining digits in the last budget cycle?

Makes sense to me.

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ISTR there's a sci-fi story that is based on finding a long string of repeating 0's (zeroes) in Pi.

Does anyone know the name of it?

Martin

ISTR there's a sci-fi story that is based on finding a long string of repeating 0's (zeroes) in Pi.

Not sure why it'd be a sci-fi. If there are an infinite number of digits, and the probability of any digit is 1 in 10, then the law of large numbers says that there will be an infinitely long string of zeros somewhere in an infinitely long number.

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ISTR there's a sci-fi story that is based on finding a long string of repeating 0's (zeroes) in Pi.

Not sure why it'd be a sci-fi. If there are an infinite number of digits, and the probability of any digit is 1 in 10, then the law of large numbers says that there will be an infinitely long string of zeros somewhere in an infinitely long number.

Of course, that infinitely long string of zeros would only be an infinitesimal portion of the whole string of digits making up pi.

Thinking like this makes my brain hurt.

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ISTR there's a sci-fi story that is based on finding a long string of repeating 0's (zeroes) in Pi.

Not sure why it'd be a sci-fi. If there are an infinite number of digits, and the probability of any digit is 1 in 10, then the law of large numbers says that there will be an infinitely long string of zeros somewhere in an infinitely long number.

Of course, that infinitely long string of zeros would only be an infinitesimal portion of the whole string of digits making up pi.

Thinking like this makes my brain hurt.

Absolutely, along with an infinite number of other strings, like 01234567890123....

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If there are...

Exactly.

No one knows if pi is or isn't infinite and that's the (fun) and crux of the problem.

It's still sci-fi because, so far, no one has detected any continuously repeating strings. If/when any are found, Pi will cease to be considered an irrational number.

Martin

If there are...

Exactly.

No one knows if pi is or isn't infinite and that's the (fun) and crux of the problem.

It's still sci-fi because, so far, no one has detected any continuously repeating strings. If/when any are found, Pi will cease to be considered an irrational number.

Martin

I think we need to review the definition of irrational.

As I remember, it only becomes rational if converges on some repetition. It doesn't necessarily become rational after some finite number of zeros, only if there are no other digits that occur between the first zero in the sequence and the very last digit of Pi.

So, finding a long sequence of zeros isn't interesting. It'd be finding that Pi is not infinitely long.

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You are all making my brain hurt. It helps, though, if I can share the pain with others.

The number and type of digits, and their patterns, in a number are a result of it being irrational or rational. They do not define the "rationality" of the number. The basic definition is (simplifying to ease the pain in my brain) rational numbers can be expressed as a fraction (i.e. a ratio of two whole numbers). Irrationals cannot. Pi has been proven irrational, way back when.

If, for example, we find that the next 2.7 trillion digits, or the next 2.7 times 10 to the 2.7 trillion digits, are all zeros, pi remains irrational. Somewhere, further out there, the zeros will stop and the apparent randomness will start up again. If we can't get to that point, it just proves that we don't have an infinite amount of CPU time (or an infinite amount of pencils and paper) to apply to the problem. Google Cantor Paradox to find out enough about infinity to make your brain hurt as well.

I hope that these people are calculating all these extra digits as an exercise in numerical methods and/or computing science, not to prove if pi is rational or not. Otherwise, it is all just "welfare for geeks" (as somebody recently said on these forums).

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"welfare for geeks"

LOL! I missed it the first time round, but I'll remember it now.