Calculating Pi

[LHH]

I was thinking of calculating Pi for fun and found this:

http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Pi-by-Throwing-Frozen-Hot-Dogs

May be old news here!

[Dieter]

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May be old news here!

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I do not know if this has been discussed here earlier, but this experimental way of evaluating Pi actually is a well known method. However, the original implementation does not use hot dogs and floor tiles, but a box of pins and a sheet of squared paper. ;-)

BTW, I own a more than 30 years old book with sample programs for teaching computer science. One of the shown Pi-algorithms actually is this experimental toss-a-hot-dog method.

Dieter

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

That's the wurst way to calculate Pi, IMO :-)

Gerson.

[Paul Dale]

Buffon's needle I believe.

I'm sure a worse way to calculate PI can be invented :)

- Pauli

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

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Buffon's needle I believe.

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Yes.

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I'm sure a worse way to calculate PI can be invented :)

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Yes, like the one above that uses wursts instead of needles :-)

Gerson.

[Paul Dale]

I was trying to come up with a formula for PI based on the divergence of the sum of the reciprocals of the primes, a very very slowly diverging series. No success at this point :(

- Pauli

[Les Koller]

"The wurst way"...OMG you guys are impossible! That's why I love you all. And yes, Buffon's needle...dropping needles on a flag

[Kimberly Thompson]

LHH

some helpful references;

Link to Buffon's Needle 1.0

Link to Pi Day's ramblings

Link to Random simulation (and stimulation)

Link to Pi day - Calculate Pi on your 15C

Link to HPCC Magazine Datafile V25

BEST!

SlideRule

[LHH]

Thanks for these links! Looks like I'll be busy for a while!

And forgive the delay, had to wait until I was on the computer that logs me in automatically. Can't seem to remember how to do that when I'm away from my main machine (its 24" CRT monitor frame is covered in sticky notes with all my logins!). Getting old!

[Gerson W. Barbosa]

I have presented a few empirical formulas to speed up Archimede's Method here and here. In the second link there's an hp 50g program to compute pi to 1,000 places in "only" three hours using such method . Other very interesting pi-related links in there as well.

Edited: 27 Sept 2013, 11:06 p.m.