- Why
?
- "The story of pi reflects the most
seminal, the most serious and sometimes the silliest aspects of
mathematics. A surprising amount of the most important mathematics
and a significant number of the most important mathematicians have
contributed to its unfolding -- directly or otherwise.
- Pi is one of the few concepts in mathematics whose mention evokes a response of recognition and interest in those not concerned professionally with the subject. It has been a part of human culture and the educated imagination for more than twenty five hundred years.
The computation of Pi is virtually the only topic from the most ancient stratum of mathematics that is still of serious interest to modern mathematical research. And to pursue this topic as it developed throughout the millennia is to follow a thread through the history of mathematics that winds through geometry, analysis and special functions, numerical analysis, algebra and number theory. It offers a subject which provides mathematicians with examples of many current mathematical techniques as well as a palpable sense of their historical development."
The above passage is taken from the introduction to "Pi : A Source Book" by L. Berggren, J. Borwein and P. Borwein. It is a large collection of papers on pi and will appear with Springer-Verlag sometime in 1997. Much additional material is available in the 1986 Wiley volume "Pi and the AGM" by J. Borwein and P. Borwein.
- Pi Story the history of the computation of Pi
- Pi Records current records of computation
- Pi People people involved in the computation of Pi in recent years
- Pi Literature
- How
to Compute 1 Billion Digits of Pi
- How to Compute the 100 Billionth Binary Digit of Pi
- Pi and the AGM
- The Quest for Pi
- Recognizing a Number
- How to Compute the 100 Billionth Binary Digit of Pi
- Experimental Pi
- Pi News
- Pi Aesthetics
- Pi on the net
- Pi
Files
- Pi and other numbers : The ISC
- More Links to other Pi-Enriched sites
- Pi and other numbers : The ISC
