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From: Richard.Milward@samba (Richard Milward)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: PI
Keywords: can be your friends
Message-ID: <1979@beguine.UUCP>
Date: 19 Dec 90 03:00:44 GMT
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Ok, so I'm a day or 2 late...
The book I attempted to refer to is _A History of Pi_
by Petr Beckmann, St. Martin's Press, (c) 1971
Library of Congress catalog card no. 74-32539
(no ISBN number listed)
Chapter titles include: Euclid; Archimedes of Syracuse;
Newton; Euler; The Monte Carlo Method; and The Computer
Age.  (A bit old, but fascinating.)  A bibliography and
chronological table are included along with a listing
of the 1st 10,000 digits.  A mention of the 1897 attempt
by the Indiana House of Representatives to legislate the
value of pi is also included.
Lots of approximation methods.  No mnemonic aids.
(See _Scientific American_ May '82 p.32 in _Metamagical
Themas_ column for some of that.)
Joe Bob gives it a shrug -- I think it's okay :-)

--Richard Milward / UNC-CH / network tech
Almost forgot: using only 1-ohm resistors, how many will
it take, in any electrical network, to approximate pi
to within 10^^-6 ?  I'll post some answers next week...