Pi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"" and "" redirect here. For the Greek letter, see Pi (letter). For other uses, see Pi
(disambiguation).

Part of a series of articles on the

mathematical constant

Uses

Area of a circle
Circumference
Use in other formulae

Properties

Irrationality
Transcendence

Value

Less than 22/7

Approximations
Memorization

People

Archimedes
Liu Hui
Zu Chongzhi
Aryabhata
Madhava
Ludolph van Ceulen
Seki Takakazu
 Takebe Kenko
William Jones
John Machin
William Shanks
John Wrench
Chudnovsky brothers
Yasumasa Kanada

History

Chronology
Book

In culture

Legislation
Holiday

Related topics

Squaring the circle

Basel problem
Six nines in
Other topics related to

v
t
e

The number (/pa/) is a mathematical constant. Originally defined as the ratio of

a circle's circumference to its diameter, it now has various equivalent definitions and appears in
many formulas in all areas of mathematics and physics. It is approximately equal to 3.14159. It has
been represented by the Greek letter "" since the mid-18th century, though it is also sometimes
spelled out as "pi".
Being an irrational number, cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction (equivalently, its decimal
representation never ends and never settles into a permanent repeating pattern). Still, fractions such
as 22/7 and other rational numbers are commonly used to approximate . The digits appear to
be randomly distributed. In particular, the digit sequence of is conjectured to satisfy a specific kind
of statistical randomness, but to date no proof of this has been discovered. Also, is
a transcendental number; that is, a number that is not the root of any non-
zero polynomial having rational coefficients. This transcendence of implies that it is impossible to
solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and straightedge.
Ancient civilizations required fairly accurate computed values for for practical reasons. It was
calculated to seven digits, using geometrical techniques, in Chinese mathematics, and to about five
 digits in Indian mathematics in the 5th century AD. The historically first exact formula for , based
on infinite series, was not available until a millennium later, when in the 14th century the Madhava
Leibniz series was discovered in Indian mathematics.[1][2] In the 20th and 21st centuries,
mathematicians and computer scientists discovered new approaches that, when combined with
increasing computational power, extended the decimal representation of to many trillions of digits
after the decimal point.[3] Practically all scientific applications require no more than a few hundred
digits of , and many substantially fewer, so the primary motivation for these computations is the
quest to find more efficient algorithms for calculating lengthy numeric series, as well as the desire to
break records.[4][5] The extensive calculations involved have also been used to
test supercomputers and high-precision multiplication algorithms.
Because its most elementary definition relates to the circle, is found in many formulae
in trigonometry and geometry, especially those concerning circles, ellipses, and spheres. In more
modern mathematical analysis, the number is instead defined using the spectral properties of
the real number system, as an eigenvalue or a period, without any reference to geometry. It appears
therefore in areas of mathematics and the sciences having little to do with the geometry of circles,
such as number theory and statistics, as well as in almost all areas of physics. The ubiquity
of makes it one of the most widely known mathematical constants both inside and outside the
scientific community; several books devoted to it have been published, the number is celebrated
on Pi Day, and record-setting calculations of the digits of often result in news headlines. Attempts
to memorize the value of with increasing precision have led to records of over 70,000 digits.

Contents
[hide]

1Fundamentals
o 1.1Name
o 1.2Definition
o 1.3Irrationality and normality
o 1.4Transcendence
o 1.5Continued fractions
o 1.6Approximate value
o 1.7Complex numbers and Euler's identity
2History
o 2.1Antiquity
o 2.2Polygon approximation era
o 2.3Infinite series
o 2.4Irrationality and transcendence
o 2.5Adoption of the symbol
3Modern quest for more digits
o 3.1Computer era and iterative algorithms
o 3.2Motives for computing
o 3.3Rapidly convergent series
o 3.4Monte Carlo methods
o 3.5Spigot algorithms
4Role and characterizations in mathematics
o 4.1Geometry and trigonometry
o 4.2Eigenvalues
o 4.3Inequalities
o 4.4Fourier transform and Heisenberg uncertainty principle
 o 4.5Gaussian integrals
o 4.6Projective geometry
o 4.7Topology
o 4.8Vector calculus
o 4.9Cauchy's integral formula
o 4.10The gamma function and Stirling's approximation
o 4.11Number theory and Riemann zeta function
o 4.12Fourier series
o 4.13Modular forms and theta functions
o 4.14Cauchy distribution and potential theory
o 4.15Complex dynamics
5Outside mathematics
o 5.1Describing physical phenomena
o 5.2Memorizing digits
o 5.3In popular culture
o 5.4In computer culture
6Notes
7Further reading
8External links

Fundamentals
Name
The symbol used by mathematicians to represent the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter
is the lowercase Greek letter , sometimes spelled out as pi, and derived from the first letter of the
Greek word perimetros, meaning circumference.[6] In English, is pronounced as
"pie" (/pa/, pa).[7] In mathematical use, the lowercase letter (or in sans-serif font) is distinguished
from its capitalized and enlarged counterpart , which denotes a product of a sequence, analogous
to how denotes summation.
The choice of the symbol is discussed in the section Adoption of the symbol .
Definition

The circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times as long as its diameter. The exact ratio is
called .
 is commonly defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference C to its diameter d:[8]

The ratio C/d is constant, regardless of the circle's size. For example, if a circle has twice the
diameter of another circle it will also have twice the circumference, preserving the ratio C/d. This
definition of implicitly makes use of flat (Euclidean) geometry; although the notion of a circle
can be extended to any curved (non-Euclidean) geometry, these new circles will no longer
satisfy the formula = C/d.[8]
Here, the circumference of a circle is the arc length around the perimeter of the circle, a quantity
which can be formally defined independently of geometry using limits, a concept
in calculus.[9] For example, one may compute directly the arc length of the top half of the unit
circle given in Cartesian coordinates by x2 + y2 = 1, as the integral:[10]

An integral such as this was adopted as the definition of by Karl Weierstrass, who defined
it directly as an integral in 1841.[11]
Definitions of such as these that rely on a notion of circumference, and hence implicitly on
concepts of the integral calculus, are no longer common in the literature. Remmert
(1991) explains that this is because in many modern treatments of calculus, differential
calculus typically precedes integral calculus in the university curriculum, so it is desirable to
have a definition of that does not rely on the latter. One such definition, due to Richard
Baltzer,[12] and popularized by Edmund Landau,[13] is the following: is twice the smallest
positive number at which the cosine function equals 0.[8][10][14] The cosine can be defined
independently of geometry as a power series,[15] or as the solution of a differential
equation.[14]
In a similar spirit, can be defined instead using properties of the complex
exponential, exp(z), of a complex variable z. Like the cosine, the complex exponential can
be defined in one of several ways. The set of complex numbers at which exp(z) is equal to
one is then an (imaginary) arithmetic progression of the form:

and there is a unique positive real number with this property.[10][16] A more abstract
variation on the same idea, making use of sophisticated mathematical concepts
of topology and algebra, is the following theorem:[17] there is a unique (up
to automorphism) continuous isomorphism from the group R/Z of real numbers under
addition modulo integers (the circle group) onto the multiplicative group of complex
numbers of absolute value one. The number is then defined as half the magnitude of
the derivative of this homomorphism.[18]
A circle encloses the largest area that can be attained within a given perimeter. Thus the
number is also characterized as the best constant in the isoperimetric inequality (times
one-fourth). There are many other, closely related, ways in which appears as
an eigenvalue of some geometrical or physical process; see below.
Irrationality and normality
is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be written as the ratio of two
integers (fractions such as 22/7 are commonly used to approximate , but no common
fraction (ratio of whole numbers) can be its exact value).[19] Because is irrational, it has
an infinite number of digits in its decimal representation, and it does not settle into an
infinitely repeating pattern of digits. There are several proofs that is irrational; they
generally require calculus and rely on the reductio ad absurdum technique. The degree
to which can be approximated by rational numbers (called the irrationality measure) is
not precisely known; estimates have established that the irrationality measure is larger
than the measure of e or ln(2) but smaller than the measure of Liouville numbers.[20]
The digits of have no apparent pattern and have passed tests for statistical
randomness, including tests for normality; a number of infinite length is called normal
when all possible sequences of digits (of any given length) appear equally often.[21] The
conjecture that is normal has not been proven or disproven.[21]
Since the advent of computers, a large number of digits of have been available on
which to perform statistical analysis. Yasumasa Kanada has performed detailed
statistical analyses on the decimal digits of and found them consistent with normality;
for example, the frequencies of the ten digits 0 to 9 were subjected to statistical
significance tests, and no evidence of a pattern was found.[22] Any random sequence of
digits contains arbitrarily long subsequences that appear non-random, by the infinite
monkey theorem. Thus, because the sequence of 's digits passes statistical tests for
randomness, it contains some sequences of digits that may appear non-random, such
as a sequence of six consecutive 9s that begins at the 762nd decimal place of the
decimal representation of .[23] This is also called the "Feynman point" in mathematical
folklore, after Richard Feynman, although no connection to Feynman is known.
Transcendence

Because is a transcendental number, squaring the circle is not possible in a finite number of
steps using the classical tools of compass and straightedge.

In addition to being irrational, more strongly is a transcendental number, which means

that it is not the solution of any non-constant polynomial
equation with rational coefficients, such as x5/120 x3/6 + x = 0.[24][25]
The transcendence of has two important consequences: First, cannot be expressed
using any finite combination of rational numbers and square roots or n-th roots such
as 331 or 10 . Second, since no transcendental number can
be constructedwith compass and straightedge, it is not possible to "square the circle". In
other words, it is impossible to construct, using compass and straightedge alone, a
square whose area is exactly equal to the area of a given circle.[26] Squaring a circle was
one of the important geometry problems of the classical antiquity.[27] Amateur
mathematicians in modern times have sometimes attempted to square the circle and
sometimes claim success despite the fact that it is mathematically impossible.[28]
Continued fractions

The constant is represented in this mosaic outside the Mathematics Building at the Technical
University of Berlin.

Like all irrational numbers, cannot be represented as a common fraction (also known
as a simple or vulgar fraction), by the very definition of "irrational number" (that is, "not a
rational number"). But every irrational number, including , can be represented by an
infinite series of nested fractions, called a continued fraction:

Truncating the continued fraction at any point yields a rational approximation for ;
the first four of these are 3, 22/7, 333/106, and 355/113. These numbers are among
the most well-known and widely used historical approximations of the constant.
Each approximation generated in this way is a best rational approximation; that is,
each is closer to than any other fraction with the same or a smaller
denominator.[29] Because is known to be transcendental, it is by definition
not algebraic and so cannot be a quadratic irrational. Therefore, cannot have
a periodic continued fraction. Although the simple continued fraction for (shown
above) also does not exhibit any other obvious pattern,[30]mathematicians have
discovered several generalized continued fractions that do, such as:[31]

Approximate value
Some approximations of pi include:

Integers: 3
Fractions: Approximate fractions include (in order of increasing
accuracy) 22/7 , 333/106 , 355/113 , 52163/16604 , 103993/33102 ,
 and 245850922/78256779 .[29] (List is selected terms from A063674and
A063673.)
Decimal: The first 50 decimal digits
are 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...[32] (s
ee A000796)
Binary: The base 2 approximation to 48 digits
is 11.001001000011111101101010100010001000010110100011... (see
A004601)
Hexadecimal: The base 16 approximation to 20 digits
is 3.243F6A8885A308D31319...[33] (see A062964)
Sexagesimal: A base 60 approximation to five sexagesimal digits is
3;8,29,44,0,47[34] (see A060707)
Complex numbers and Euler's identity

The association between imaginary powers of the number e and points on the unit
circle centered at the origin in the complex plane given by Euler's formula.

Any complex number, say z, can be expressed using a pair of real numbers. In
the polar coordinate system, one number (radius or r) is used to represent z's
distance from the origin of the complex plane and the other (angle or ) to
represent a counter-clockwise rotation from the positive real line as follows:[35]

where i is the imaginary unit satisfying i2 = 1. The frequent appearance

of in complex analysis can be related to the behavior of the exponential
function of a complex variable, described by Euler's formula:[36]

where the constant e is the base of the natural logarithm. This formula
establishes a correspondence between imaginary powers of e and
points on the unit circle centered at the origin of the complex plane.
Setting = in Euler's formula results in Euler's identity, celebrated by
mathematicians because it contains the five most important
mathematical constants:[36][37]
There are n different complex numbers z satisfying zn = 1, and
these are called the "n-th roots of unity".[38] They are given by this
formula:
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