Welcome to the beta version of Shelfari’s new Book Detail pages!
These pages are editable by the community, so please contribute! Click here to learn more about this feature. We’d love to hear your feedback.
Description
No number has captured the attention and imaginations of people throughout the ages as much as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. With incisive historical insight and a refreshing sense of humor, David Blatner explores the many facets of pi and humankind's fascination... read more
Memorable Quotes
-
“We know pi best from the circle ratio, and yet it appears throughout mathematics, physics, statistics, engineering, architecture, biology, astronomy, and even the arts. Pi lies hidden in the rhythms of both sound waves and ocean waves, ubiquitous in nature as well as in geometry. There's little doubt that if we understood this number better -if we could find a pattern in its digits or a deeper awareness of why it appears in so many seemingly unrelated equations -we'd have a deeper understanding of mathematics and the physics of our universe.”
David Blatner
First Sentence
It's impossible to know when the first person observed that as a circle got larger, its diameter and circumference grew in constant proportion to each other.
Table of Contents
PREFACE: CIRCLES AND SQUARES XI
An exploration of the relationship between natures' perfect form, the circle, and humankind's perfect form, the square.
INTRODUCTION: WHY PI? I
We have no practical use for a measurement of pi that is accurate to more than fifteen or twenty decimal places. So why do mathematicians continue to devote their lives to finding more digits and new ways to calculate them? What secrets might pi hold?
A HISTORY OF PI 7
Early History: 2000 - 500 B.C.E.
The Greeks: 500 B.C.E. - 200 C.E.
Pi in the East: 100 - 700 C.E.
A Millennium of Progress: 600 -1600C.E.
Breakthroughs in Mathematics: 1600 - 1900 C.E.
The Age of Electronic Computers: 1900 C.E. - the Present
A Pi Chronology
THE CHUDNOVSKY BROTHERS 65
The story of the Russian immigrant brothers who, in their mid-forties, built a supercomputer in their apartment from off-the-shelf parts in order to harvest transcendental numbers and explore infinite series at their leisure.
THE SYMBOL PI 75
Why pi? A brief look at the most commonly used Greek letter to symbolize the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
THE PERSONALITY OF PI 83
Numbers, like people, have qualities and characteristics -you can get to know a number and explore how it interacts with other numbers. What is the nature of pi?
THE CIRCLE SQUARERS 89
A lighthearted look at attempts to solve one of the most famous (and elusive) mathematical puzzles of all time: constructing a square with exactly the same area as a circle, using only a straightedge and compass, and doing it in a finite number of steps.
MEMORIZING PI 109
Pi mnemonics, poems, and other tricks to memorize digits of pi -including the mind-boggling stories of people who have memorized and recited tens of thousands of digits.
AFTERWORD 122
MORE INFORMATION ON PI . . . 123
INDEX 124
Authors & Contributors
- David Blatner (Author)
Popular Tags
Books with Additional Background Information
List the books that contain additional information about this book.
If you have any suggestions for how we can improve this page or if there are sections that you would like us to add, please let us know.
