Who Invented Pi Math.Pi has been known for nearly 4,000 years. The letters are the Greek characters which are pronounced pi and pi can also be used in writing. The commonly used value is 3.14 or but to be more precise, it has been searched to > 1,241,100,000,000 decimal places. The value to 10 decimal places is 3.14159265358.
Who Invented Pi Math.
The concept of pi (π) in mathematics has been around for thousands of years and was not invented by any single individual. Instead, pi is a mathematical constant that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It is an irrational number, meaning it cannot be expressed as a simple fraction and has an infinite non-repeating decimal representation.
The symbol “π” to represent this mathematical constant was first introduced by the mathematician William Jones in 1706, and it was popularized by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in the 18th century.
Here is a brief history of discovering pi :
The ancient Babylonians calculated the area of a circle by taking 3 times the square of the radius, which gives the value of pi = 3. One Babylonian tablet (ca. 1900-1680 BC) shows a value of 3.125 for pi, which is a closer approximation.
Rhind Papyrus (ca.1650 BC), there is evidence that the Egyptians calculated the area of a circle by a formula which gives an approximate value for pi of 3.1605.
The ancient cultures mentioned above found their approach to measurement. The first calculations of pi were made by Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC), one of the ancient world’s greatest mathematicians. Archimedes estimated the area of a circle by using the Pythagorean Theorem to find the areas of two regular polygons: the polygon inscribed inside the circle and the polygon within which the circle is bounded.
Since the actual area of a circle lies between the area of the inscribed and the bounded polygon, the area of the polygon provides the upper and lower bounds for the area of the circle. Archimedes knew that he had not discovered the value of pi but only an approximation within these limits. In this way, Archimedes showed that pi is between and .
A similar approach was used by Zu Chongzhi (429-501), the brilliant Chinese mathematician and astronomer. Zu Chongzhi would not have been familiar with Archimedes’ methods—but since 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 . To calculate this accuracy for pi, he always began by regularly writing the 24,576-gon and performing lengthy calculations involving hundreds of square roots done to 9 decimal places.
Mathematicians started using the Greek letter π in the 1700s. Introduced by William Jones in 1706, the use of this symbol was popularized by Euler, who adopted it in 1737. An 18th 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.
Pi, named after a Greek letter, is uniquely neither named by the Greeks nor discovered by them.The concept of pi was first raised by the Ancient Egyptians as evidenced by a historical record which states that this number was used in 1650 BC.
