A Short History of π

A verse in I Kings of the Old Testament of the Bible reads, “Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits in height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.” 1 That is, the molten sea was round, 30 cubits in circumference and ten cubits in diameter, giving a Biblical calculation of π as 30/10 = 3. 2 At the beginning of recorded history people saw circles in nature, both great and small, and over time came to realize that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its radius, which they took to be 3, was important. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Advanced Mathematical Identities · Analytic Number Theory Research · Computer Science · History