Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2013 March 29

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March 29

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How many figures of Pi are still useful?

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What the point of calculating thousands of them? OsmanRF34 (talk) 16:43, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yea, it is purely a mathematical exercise at that point. However, we might find some strange pattern if we look deeply enough. StuRat (talk) 16:50, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
63 digits is enough to compute how many Planck lengths fit on a perfect circle with radius equal to that of observable universe. Count Iblis (talk) 17:22, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We need about 1020 places in base 11 to check out the hypothesis in Contact (novel). ;-) Dmcq (talk) 17:26, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ha, but then if pi is a normal number, it will contain the entire Wikipedia an infinite number of times, including all the questions and answers on this Ref Desk :) . Count Iblis (talk) 18:12, 29 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]