In the year 1819, Lagny of Paris outdid the computation of Machin, determining in two different ways the first 127 decimal places of π. Vega then obtained as many as 140 places, and the Hamburg arithmetician Zacharias Dase went as far as 200 places. The latter did not use Machin's series in his calculation, but the series produced by putting in the general series above given a = 1/2, b = 1/5, c = 1/8. Finally, at a recent date, π has been computed to 500 places.
#Idea of exactness obtainable with the approximate values of π.#
The computation to so many decimal places may serve as an illustration of the excellence of the modern method as contrasted with those anciently employed, but otherwise it has neither a theoretical nor a practical value. That the computation of π to say 15 decimal places more than sufficiently satisfies the subtlest requirements of practice may be gathered from a concrete example of the degree of exactness thus obtainable. Imagine a circle to be described with Berlin as centre, and the circumference to pass through Hamburg; then let the circumference of the circle be computed by multiplying its diameter with the value of π to 15 decimal places, and then conceive it to be actually measured. The deviation from the true length in so large a circle as this even could not be as great as the 18 millionth part of a millimetre.
An idea can hardly be obtained of the degree of exactness produced by 100 decimal places. But the following example may possibly give us some conception of it. Conceive a sphere constructed with the earth as centre, and imagine its surface to pass through Sirius, which is 134-1/2 million million kilometres distant from us. Then imagine this enormous sphere to be so packed with microbes that in every cubic millimetre millions of millions of these diminutive animalcula are present. Now conceive these microbes to be all unpacked and so distributed singly along a straight line, that every two microbes are as far distant from each other as Sirius from us, that is 134-1/2 million million kilometres. Conceive the long line thus fixed by all the microbes, as the diameter of a circle, and imagine the circumference of it to be calculated by multiplying its diameter with π to 100 decimal places. Then, in the case of a circle of this enormous magnitude even, the circumference thus calculated would not vary from the real circumference by a millionth of a millimetre.
This example will suffice to show that the calculation of π to 100 or 500 decimal places is wholly useless.
#Professor Wolff's curious method.#
Before we close this chapter upon the evaluation of π, we must mention the method, less fruitful than curious, which Professor Wolff of Zurich employed some decades ago to compute the value of π to 3 places. The floor of a room is divided up into equal squares, so as to resemble a huge chess-board, and a needle exactly equal in length to the side of each of these squares, is cast haphazard upon the floor. If we calculate, now, the probabilities of the needle so falling as to lie wholly within one of the squares, that is so that it does not cross any of the parallel lines forming the squares, the result of the calculation for this probability will be found to be exactly equal to π - 3. Consequently, a sufficient number of casts of the needle according to the law of large numbers must give the value of π approximately. As a matter of fact, Professor Wolff, after 10000 trials, obtained the value of π correctly to 3 decimal places.
#Mathematicians now seek to prove the insolvability of the problem.#
Fruitful as the calculus of Newton and Leibnitz was for the evaluation of π, the problem of converting a circle into a square having exactly the same area was in no wise advanced thereby. Wallis, Newton, Leibnitz, and their immediate followers distinctly recognised this. The quadrature of the circle could not be solved; but it also could not be proved that the problem was insolvable with ruler and compasses, although everybody was convinced of its insolvability. In mathematics, however, a conviction is only justified when supported by incontrovertible proof; and in the place of endeavors to solve the quadrature there accordingly now come endeavors to prove the impossibility of solving the celebrated problem.
#Lambert's contribution.#