The Future Of Pi Is No Symbol In Mathematics

Math is about numbers; these numbers span from positive to negative, rational to irrational and complex to imaginary. The main number that this essay will be looking at is the irrational number known as pi. Many different civilizations throughout history have had their own approximations for pi. In fact one of the first aspects in defining the number known as pi was coming up with a variable that could represent this number. Π was decided to be the variable that stuck and its origins can be traced back to the Greeks (Wilson). Pi is a concept that can be traced back to ancient times to the middle ages and even today many computer software programs continue to evolve pi. William L. Schaaf said, "Probably no symbol in mathematics has evoked as much mystery, romanticism, misconception and human …show more content…
In 1945 D. F Ferguson pressed the limits of computer calculation of pi with a years worth of work on the number leading to 808 digits of pi (Wilson). Many computer programmers and mathematicians followed Ferguson’s computer work to continually crunch out digits for pi in attempt to create software that could calculate digits of pi faster and faster. In 1976 Eugene Salamin put the final mark on his algorithm, which constantly doubles the number of accurate digits with each iteration of pi (Wilson). Today the world is blessed with the current record being 68,719,470,000 digits found by Kanada and Takahashi in 1999 (Wilson). Even to this day mathematicians are still trying to search and search for more digits of pi. The relevance of this search is minimal as the practical application of using more then 100 digits of pi is very minimal. A more important feat that mathematicians are currently looking into is a pattern within pi. The question that leaves many mathematicians scratching their heads is there away to pick up pi in the middle of its strand of digits and quickly identify it as being part of