The number π is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, approximately equal to 3.14159. The number π appears in many formulae across mathematics and physics. It is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be expressed exactly as a ratio of two integers, although fractions such as are commonly used to approximate it. Consequently, its decimal representation never ends, nor enters a permanently repeating pattern. It is a transcendental number, meaning that it cannot be a solution of an equation involving only finite sums, products, powers, and integers. The transcendence of π implies that it is impossible to solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and straightedge. The decimal digits of π appear to be randomly distributed, but no proof of this conjecture has been found.
A computer algebra system (CAS) or symbolic algebra system (SAS) is any mathematical software with the ability to manipulate mathematical expressions in a way similar to the traditional manual computations of mathematicians and scientists. The development of the computer algebra systems in the second half of the 20th century is part of the discipline of "computer algebra" or "symbolic computation", which has spurred work in algorithms over mathematical objects such as polynomials.
Maple is a symbolic and numeric computing environment as well as a multi-paradigm programming language. It covers several areas of technical computing, such as symbolic mathematics, numerical analysis, data processing, visualization, and others. A toolbox, MapleSim, adds functionality for multidomain physical modeling and code generation.
David Harold Bailey is a mathematician and computer scientist. He received his B.S. in mathematics from Brigham Young University in 1972 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from Stanford University in 1976. He worked for 14 years as a computer scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, and then from 1998 to 2013 as a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is now retired from the Berkeley Lab.
Experimental mathematics is an approach to mathematics in which computation is used to investigate mathematical objects and identify properties and patterns. It has been defined as "that branch of mathematics that concerns itself ultimately with the codification and transmission of insights within the mathematical community through the use of experimental exploration of conjectures and more informal beliefs and a careful analysis of the data acquired in this pursuit."
This list contains selected positive numbers in increasing order, including counts of things, dimensionless quantities and probabilities. Each number is given a name in the short scale, which is used in English-speaking countries, as well as a name in the long scale, which is used in some of the countries that do not have English as their national language.
Simon Plouffe is a mathematician who discovered the Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula which permits the computation of the nth binary digit of π, in 1995. His other 2022 formula allows extracting the nth digit of π in decimal. He was born in Saint-Jovite, Quebec.
The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS) is an online database of integer sequences. It was created and maintained by Neil Sloane while researching at AT&T Labs. He transferred the intellectual property and hosting of the OEIS to the OEIS Foundation in 2009. Sloane is the chairman of the OEIS Foundation.
In mathematics, an expression is in closed form if it is formed with constants, variables and a finite set of basic functions connected by arithmetic operations and function composition. Commonly, the allowed functions are nth root, exponential function, logarithm, and trigonometric functions. However, the set of basic functions depends on the context.
Jonathan Michael Borwein was a Scottish mathematician who held an appointment as Laureate Professor of mathematics at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He was a close associate of David H. Bailey, and they have been prominent public advocates of experimental mathematics.
Peter Benjamin Borwein was a Canadian mathematician and a professor at Simon Fraser University. He is known as a co-author of the paper which presented the Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe algorithm for computing π.
The table below is a brief chronology of computed numerical values of, or bounds on, the mathematical constant pi. For more detailed explanations for some of these calculations, see Approximations of π.
Approximations for the mathematical constant pi in the history of mathematics reached an accuracy within 0.04% of the true value before the beginning of the Common Era. In Chinese mathematics, this was improved to approximations correct to what corresponds to about seven decimal digits by the 5th century.
Bellard's formula is used to calculate the nth digit of π in base 16.
The following tables list the computational complexity of various algorithms for common mathematical operations.
An integer relation between a set of real numbers x1, x2, ..., xn is a set of integers a1, a2, ..., an, not all 0, such that
A timeline of numerals and arithmetic.
The Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula is a formula for π. It was discovered in 1995 by Simon Plouffe and is named after the authors of the article in which it was published, David H. Bailey, Peter Borwein, and Plouffe. Before that, it had been published by Plouffe on his own site. The formula is
A mathematical constant is a key number whose value is fixed by an unambiguous definition, often referred to by a special symbol, or by mathematicians' names to facilitate using it across multiple mathematical problems. Constants arise in many areas of mathematics, with constants such as e and π occurring in such diverse contexts as geometry, number theory, statistics, and calculus.
