The Story of Number π

“Nowadays, any student calculates the length of a circumference after its diameter, in a more
precise way than any priest in the ancient country of the pyramids, or the most skilled architect
of the great Rome could have ever done“... without suspecting though, that in their calculations
there is a number that interferes, a number which has concerned even the greatest
mathematicians over the years.

This number π is a mathematical constant that represents the algebraic report between the
circumference and the diameter of any circle in the Euclidian space.On the Proposal of famous
Mathematician William Jones in 1706,this constant gets its symbolic representation as π(pi).

Regarding the value of this number ,it has a very faraway and full of adventures history.

“He made the big turntable of brass. It had ten cubits from one side to the other, it was totally
round, tall of five cubits and all around it could be measured with a thread of thirty cubits“.

-This text from the Bible, in which we notice the value 3 for number π,ensures the fact that,
in different shapes, values or representations, this number was already present in people’s life
long time ago.

Even the ancient Hebrew people were using the same value 3 for number ,but the
Babylonians, being more accurate, were using in calculations

𝜋 = 3 + 7⁄60 + 30⁄(60) 2 ≈ 3125

The ancient Egyptians knew a better approximation, thus, on Rhind papyrus , calculating the
(16 ∗ 16)
area of a discus, scribe Almes used π= ⁄(9 ∗ 9) = 31604 ….

In the sacred Indian geometry, in the so called sulba-sutras that come from the 8th –3rd BC
centuries, remarkable values for π appears:Aryabhatta(499 B.C)calculated the perimeterof the
inscribed polygon with 386 sides and he got the value π = 3927⁄1250 = 3,1416.

Using regular polygons with 96 sides, Archimedes estimated the value of π as being
10 1
3 <𝜋<3
17 7
Even in the ancient China there were preocupations regarding tha value of π.So, following
Archimedes’s method, Liu-Hui (236 B.C.)gets to the polygon with 192 sides and he calculates π
= 3,14 and Tsu Ch’ing-Chi (462 B.C.) was the one who gave it a surprisingly precise value for
those times, meaning: 3,1415926 < π < 3,1415927, and for practical purposes, he took π =
355⁄ 22
113 or π = ⁄7.
Between 1946 and 1947, D.F. Ferguson (Manchester University) and, independent from him,
J.W. Wrench (in Washington) calculated the value of π with 808 decimals and felt satisfied
discovering that in Shenks’s calculations (who in 1873 published a value for π with 707
decimals) there was an error beginning with the 528th figure.

Later, in 1949, with the help of an electronic computing machine belonging to Pensilvania
University, ENIAC type, the value of π with 2040 decimals was calculated (during 96 hours).

A constant preocupation of mathematicians represented the improvement through different

methods of the approximation of number π.

Thus, the history of mathematics records calculating fomulae for π, with the help of whitch the
desired approximation can be obtained:
1 1 1
Π=1- + − … … … … … … … (𝑙𝑒𝑖𝑏𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑧 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎)
3 5 9

2 2 4 4 6 6
Π=2. . . . . . … … … … … . (𝑊𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑠)
1 3 3 5 5 7

About its irrational character, we find references since the IXth century in Abu Abdullah
Muhammad bin Musa al-Khwarizm’s writings, then, in the XIIth century, when Maimonides
said that he was sure about the irrationality of π, but a fully demonstration was performedonly
in 1768 by Johann Heinrich Lambert.

Later, in 1882, the German mathematician Ferdinand Lindemann establishes the transcedental
character of π, ending up, this way, to the mathematicians’ millenary kneadings and on this
occasion, they also cut permanently the quadrature of the circle problem. This fact didn’t stop
many other mathematicians finding it some other decimals.

In 2013 two Japanese researchers, with the help of a super computer, managed to pass over
the barrier of calculating with 10,000 billiard decimals for the same number π and the
calculation goes on.

Such efforts for such calculations or approximations have no theoretical value and even less, a
practical value, given that since 1882 the nature of this number has already been established.
Dimitri Grave, a Mathematics teacher, proved in an extremely clear manner the absolute
uselessness even of the first hundred decimals from the value of π. He said that if we imagined
a sphere, whose radius was equal with the distance from Earth to star Sirius , we would fill this
sphere with bacetria, assuming that in each cubic millimeter would exist one billion bacteria,
then we would arrange all these bacteria in a straight line so that the distance between two
neighbour bacteria is equal again with the distince between Earth and Sirius, then accepting
this fantastic segment as the diameter of a circle, we would be able to calculate its length with
1
a microscopic precision, meaning up to , using one hundred decimals after the comma
1000000
from the value of π.

For common calculations with π it is fully enough to remember the first two decimals (3, 14)
and for more precise calculations it is enough to retain the Romanian expression “How I need
a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics in which the
decimals of the number π are equal with the number of letters of each word.”

DIBYASHRI SARMA
BSc (Mathematics),Nalbari College
MSc(Mathematics,pursuing),Cotton University