Xref: utzoo comp.compression:210 sci.math:16366 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!deccrl!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!dkuug!dde!Aragorn!ct From: ct@dde.dk (Claus Tondering) Newsgroups: comp.compression,sci.math Subject: Re: Program for Calculating PI Message-ID: <1991Apr3.115334.24946@dde.dk> Date: 3 Apr 91 11:53:34 GMT References: <1991Apr3.014832.15021@linus.mitre.org> Organization: Dansk Data Elektronik A/S Lines: 36 bs@faron.mitre.org (Robert D. Silverman) writes: >In article avenger@wpi.WPI.EDU (Samuel Joseph Pullara) writes: >>Could someone please send me a program that will calculate PI to any >>arbitrary number of digits? Thanks in advance... > >Let me add my opinion. > >Please do NOT comply with the above request. > >If the poster wants a large number of digits [of pi], over 1 billion >have already been calculated. > >I fail to see what the poster hopes to accomplish by having someone else >hand him a black box program to compute something that has already been >done many times. All the poster would do is waste CPU time on some machine >repeating those calculations, while learning NOTHING in the process. But you forget something: The pure joy of seeing something work! I think I understand the original poster's motives for issuing his request, and I can certainly sympathize. There is a simple pleasure in seeing a computer print out the result of a complex calculation. This joy is purely irrational - it has nothing to do with the joy of learning or the joy of creating - but it is a joy nevertheless. However, the joy disappears if the computer program is simply printing a string of digits that have been hard-coded into the program from a book. Bob, your reply is 100% reasonable from a purely logical point of view; but there are pleasures in this world that cannot be justified by logic, and seeing a computer print out the digits of PI or e or sqrt(2) as the result of a computation is one of those pleasures. -- Claus Tondering, Dansk Data Elektronik A/S, Herlev, Denmark E-mail: ct@dde.dk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1 ns < 2 cents < 10 V < 1 km < 100 degrees C < 20 mips < 4 MPa < 1,000,000,000