>>>>> "Vidar" == Vidar Hokstad <vidarh at screenmedia.no> writes:
Vidar> Not to mention that you will likely *never* deal with any
Vidar> objects that are large enough that you'll actually *need*
Vidar> pi to that many decimal places. It's more of a mental
Vidar> excercise to see if you can do it. Even dealing with
Vidar> astronomic distances you're rather unlikely to need
Vidar> anything more than 10-15 decimals.
That's not about physical sizes, but the accuracy needed. 3.14 is only
0.05% smaller than 3.1415926535897932384626433. That inaccuracy is
negligible in most applications. For more precision, 3.1416 is only
0.0002% larger. 355/113 is off by 0.000008%.
Yes, memorizing pi to so many digits is just a mental exercise, not
for practical use.
--
Lee Sau Dan $(0,X)wAV(B(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
.----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|http://www.cs.hku.hk/~sdlee e-mail: sdlee at csis.hku.hk |
`----------------------------------------------------------------------------'