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Question from mahesh, a student:

what is the exact value of pi.
22/7 is accurate value of pi, if not then how can i find out the exact pi value.

Mahesh,

The number π can't be expressed as a common fraction or a decimal with a finite number of digits or even as a decimal with repeating digits. Calculating digits of π has been a pastime of mathematicians for many years and is now a task that is sometimes used to demonstrate the power of supercomputers. The following quote comes from a page on the MathWorld site.

"In December 2002, computer scientists Kanada, Ushio and Kuroda computed π to a world record 1.2411×1012 (more than one trillion) decimal digits, besting their previous world record of 206158430000 digits, set in 1999. The computation consumed more than 600 hours of time of a Hitachi SR8000 supercomputer (Peterson 2002, Kanada 2003)."

There is more information on π in many places on the web including a page on Wikipedia and a page on the Math History site at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

Harley

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