For thousands of years, mathematicians have attempted to extend their understanding of , sometimes by computing its value to a high degree

of accuracy. Before the 16th century, mathematicians such as Archimedes and Liu Hui used geometrical techniques, based on polygons, to estimate the value of . starting in the 16th century, new data based on infinite series modernized the computation of , and were used by mathematicians.

Pi is a very old number. We know that the Egyptians and the Babylonians knew about the existence of the constant ratio pi, although they didn't know its value nearly as well as we do today. They had figured out that it was a little bigger than 3, and later mathematicians in ancient Greece, particularly Archimedes, improved on those approximations. Archimedes made the first theoretical calculation of a value of pi was Archimedes worked out that pi is around 22/7. Archimedes's results rested upon approximating the area of a circle based on the area of a regular polygon inscribed within the circle and the area of a regular polygon within which the circle was circumscribed.

The first mathematician to use the Greek letter to represent the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter was William Jones, who used it in his work. He may have chosen because it was the first letter in the Greek spelling of the word periphery. After Jones introduced the Greek letter in 1706, it was not adopted by other mathematicians until Leonhard Euler used it in 1736. Before then, mathematicians sometimes used letters such as c or p instead. Because Euler corresponded heavily with other mathematicians in Europe, the use of the Greek letter spread rapidly.

By the start of the 20th century, about 500 digits of pi were known. The development of computers in the mid-20th century again revolutionized the hunt for digits of . The record was broken repeatedly until 1 million digits was reached in 1973.With computation advances, thanks to computers, now a day we now know more than the first six billion digits of pi.

Formulas
Vieta's Formula 2/PI = 2/2 * ( 2 + 2 )/2 * (2 + ( ( 2 + 2) ) )/2 * ...c

Leibnitz's Formula PI/4 = 1/1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ...

Wallis Product PI/2 = 2/1 * 2/3 * 4/3 * 4/5 * 6/5 * 6/7 * ... 2/PI = (1 - 1/22)(1 - 1/42)(1 - 1/62)...

Lord Brouncker's Formula 4/PI = 1 + 1 ---------------2 + 32 -----------2 + 52 --------2 + 72 ... (PI2)/8 = 1/12 + 1/32 + 1/52 + ... (PI2)/24 = 1/22 + 1/42 + 1/62 + ...

Euler's Formula (PI2)/6 = (n = 1.. ) 1/n2 = 1/12 + 1/22 + 1/32 + ...

(or more generally...) (n = 1.. ) 1/n(2k) = (-1)(k-1) PI(2k) 2(2k) B(2k) / ( 2(2k)!) B(k) = the k th Bernoulli number. eg. B0=1 B1=-1/2 B2=1/6 B4=-1/30 B6=1/42 B8=-1/30 B10=5/66. Further Bernoulli numbers are defined as (n 0)B0 + (n 1)B1 + (n 2)B2 + ... + (n (n-1))B(N-1) = 0 assuming all odd Bernoulli #'s > 1 are = 0. (n k) = binomial coefficient = n!/(k!(n-k)!) See Power Summations #2 for simplified expressions (without the Bernoulli notation) of these sums for given values of k.

= 3.14159265359