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Article: [pi] division and addition.
- Article from:
- Australian Mathematics Teacher
- Article date:
- June 22, 2008
- Author:
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Copyright informationCOPYRIGHT 2008 The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The number [pi]
In AMT Volume 64 Number 1 we saw that the number [pi][approximately or equal to] 3.14159 is defined to be the ratio C/d of the circumference C to the diameter d of any given circle. In particular, [pi] measures the circumference of a circle of diameter d = 1. Historically, the Greek mathematician Archimedes found good approximations for [pi] by inscribing and circumscribing many-sided polygons about this circle, and calculating their perimeters.
Since [pi] stands for an infinite decimal, for practical purposes it is useful to find fractions which have a value close to [pi]. We look at this first. Later we look at one of several surprising appearances of ...
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