The Latest Value For Pi

Pi, that lovely number that is the ratio of circumference to diameter and is classified as an irrational number because the digits do not repeat and do not end. It is needed to determine the volume and area in circles and spheres.  It's been known for a long time and in 1706 the Greek letter was assigned to the ration. 

On the latest front of mathematical news, Swiss researchers have managed to calculate pi out to 62.8 trillion figures using a supercomputer.  They set a new record for precision. The calculation took 108 days and nine hours to arrive at this value. The calculations were twice as fast as Google cloud in 2019 and 3.5 times as fast as the previous record set in 2020.  They are not revealing all the digits quite yet because they are waiting for the Guinness Book of Records to certify their results.  The last record calculated it to 50 trillion.

Now most people can't picture 62.8 trillion digits but to give you an idea, think of it this way.  If you took all the digits and printed them out, they could fill the British Library ten times over.  The British library is over 112,000 square meters.  It covers 14 floors spread out over 9 floors above ground and 5 below. There are at least 13.5 million printed and e-books.  

Perhaps you wonder why people want to calculate the value of pi to 62.8 trillion digits?  The more digits known, the better the precision for finding things.  When using pi to the tenth digit to calculate the circumference of the earth is found to the precision of within a millimeter.  When you use it out 32 places, scientists can calculate the circumference of the Milky Way to the precision of a hydrogen atom.  With the use of 65 digits one can calculate the size of the observable universe within the shortest measurable distance.

At this point in time, knowing the actual digits out to 62.8 trillion figures doesn't appear to have a scientific use but the quest for calculating so many places has been going on for a very long time. Mathematicians have been doing this since ancient times but it's been the methods used that have changed over times especially once Calculus came into use.

As mathematicians search for a new, better way to calculate pi, they learn more about pi itself. Each time a new formula using an infinite sum is found, it only adds a few new numbers to the digit. The infinite sum used to calculate the record setting value in 2020 was discovered in 1988 and only added 14 new digit places for each new term added to the sum.

On the other hand, one advantage to finding more digits in pi is that it allows super computers to be developed and tested to be better. In addition, it tests the high precision multiplication algorithms as they are worked out. These calculational discoveries will help improve weather casting, DNA sequencing, and COVID modeling.  

Just image how calculating more digits for Pi benefits everyone in so many other areas of their lives.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.