Scribd
Upload
2K views

A Brief History of π

Pi has been approximated for over 4000 years, with early Babylonian and Egyptian mathematicians estimating it to be around 3. Later, Archimedes more accurately bounded pi between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71 by calculating the areas of inscribed and circumscribed polygons. In the 5th century AD, Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi calculated pi to 355/113, one of the most accurate approximations at that time. It was not until the 1700s that mathematicians began commonly using the symbol π to represent pi.

Uploaded by

Ahmed Abbas
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
2K views

A Brief History of π

Pi has been approximated for over 4000 years, with early Babylonian and Egyptian mathematicians estimating it to be around 3. Later, Archimedes more accurately bounded pi between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71 by calculating the areas of inscribed and circumscribed polygons. In the 5th century AD, Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi calculated pi to 355/113, one of the most accurate approximations at that time. It was not until the 1700s that mathematicians began commonly using the symbol π to represent pi.

Uploaded by

Ahmed Abbas
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

A Brief History of

Pi has been known for almost 4000 yearsbut


even if we calculated the number of seconds in
those 4000 years and calculated pi to that
number of places, we would still only be
approximating its actual value. Heres a brief
history of finding pi:
The ancient Babylonians
calculated the area of a circle by
taking 3 times the square of its
radius, which gave a value of pi =
3. One Babylonian tablet (ca. 19001680 BC)
indicates a value of 3.125 for pi, which is a closer
approximation.

The Rhind Papyrus (ca.1650 BC)


gives us insight into the
mathematics of ancient Egypt. The
Egyptians calculated the area of a
circle by a formula that gave the
approximate value of 3.1605 for pi.

The first calculation of pi was done by Archimedes of


Syracuse (287212 BC), one of the greatest
mathematicians of the ancient world. Archimedes
approximated the area of a circle by using the
Pythagorean Theorem to find the areas of two
regular polygons: the polygon inscribed within the
circle and the polygon within which the circle was
circumscribed. Since the actual area of the circle lies
between the areas of the inscribed and
circumscribed polygons, the areas of the polygons
gave upper and lower bounds for the area of the
circle. Archimedes knew that he
had not found the value of pi but
only an approximation within
those limits. In this way,
Archimedes showed that pi is
between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71.

A similar approach was used by Zu Chongzhi (429


501), a brilliant Chinese mathematician and
astronomer. Zu Chongzhi would not have been
familiar with Archimedes methodbut because his
book has been lost, little is known of his work. He
calculated the value of the ratio of the circumference
of a circle to its diameter to be 355/113. To compute
this accuracy for pi, he must have started with an
inscribed regular 24,576-gon and performed lengthy
calculations involving hundreds of square roots
carried out to 9 decimal
places.

Mathematicians began using


the Greek letter in the
1700s. Introduced by William
Jones in 1706, use of the
symbol was popularized by Leonhard Euler, who
adopted it in 1737.

An Eighteenth century French


mathematician named Georges
Buffon devised a way to calculate pi
based on probability. You can try it yourself at the
Exploratorium's Pi Toss exhibit.

You might also like