“Mathematics enthusiasts will this weekend be celebrating Pi day, which falls on 14 March in honour of the famous ratio’s first few digits, 3.14. You probably know that pi is the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, but here are some less familiar facts about the mathematical constant. We did consider giving you 3.14 facts but alas we had five…
Pi really is in the sky…
The stars overhead inspired the ancient Greeks, but they probably never used them to calculate pi. Robert Matthews of the University of Aston in Birmingham, UK, combined astronomical data with number theory to do just that.
Matthews used the fact that for any large collection of random numbers, the probability that any two have no common factor is 6/pi2. Numbers have a common factor if they are divisible by the same number, not including 1. For example, 4 and 15 have no common factors, but 12 and 15 have the common factor 3.”
Read more at New Scientist (thanks, SuZi)
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mmm…pi
It’s only Pi day in America. Here, pi day is the 3rd of Smapril.
How I wish I could calculate pi.