"Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}" wrote:
>> >>>>> "Alan" == Alan Roth <alan42 at mindspring.com> writes:
>> Alan> How many digits can you memorize? I haven't found a personal
> Alan> need to go past 3.14159.
>> Quite true. On Linux (and most Unices), it's very easy to get a
> decimal expansion of pi for as many places as you like (provided your
> computer has enough virtual memory, and you have enough patience).
>> $ echo 'scale=400; 4*a(1)' | time bc -l
> 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307\
> 81640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058\
> 22317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644\
> 28810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610\
> 45432664821339360726024914127372458700660631558817488152092096282925\
> 40917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116092
>> This took only 9 seconds on a Pentium 133 running Linux. So, why
> memorize pi to so many decimal places?
Not to mention that you will likely *never* deal with any objects that
are large
enough that you'll actually *need* pi to that many decimal places. It's
more of
a mental excercise to see if you can do it. Even dealing with astronomic
distances
you're rather unlikely to need anything more than 10-15 decimals.
Regards,
Vidar Hokstad
<vidar at hokstad.com>
