The Mystery of 355/113
owl writes:
http://davidbau.com/archives/2010/03/14/the_mystery_of_355113.html
March 14, 2010
Today's date is a good excuse to memorize a few more digits of 3.1415926535897932384626433832795....
And yet decimal approximations to pi are an artifact of our ten-fingered anatomy. Fractional approximations to pi are more satisfying, and they promise to teach us something more universal about pi.
We all know that 22/7 is a very good approximation to pi. But this well-known fraction is is actually 1/791 larger than a slightly less-well-known but much more mysterious rational approximation for pi: pi ~ 22/7 - 1/791 = 355/113.
What do you use when doing approximate calculations? Do you rely on a calculator or do you still feel comfortable doing mental arithmetic?
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.