Xref: utzoo comp.compression:234 sci.math:16401 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!news.cs.indiana.edu!nstn.ns.ca!cs.dal.ca!ug.cs.dal.ca!digdon From: digdon@ug.cs.dal.ca (Mike Digdon) Newsgroups: comp.compression,sci.math Subject: Re: Program for Calculating PI Message-ID: <1991Apr4.132101.9623@cs.dal.ca> Date: 4 Apr 91 13:21:01 GMT References: <1991Apr3.014832.15021@linus.mitre.org> Sender: news@cs.dal.ca (USENET News) Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada Lines: 28 Nntp-Posting-Host: ug.cs.dal.ca In article <1991Apr3.014832.15021@linus.mitre.org> 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. > >If the poster wants to know HOW it is done, he would be better off >studying the actual mathematics than by reading some computer program. >He might even then [God forbid!] learn something by writing his own >program. > >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. Indeed, why waste time doing something that was already done.. perhaps that is why he is asking for the program... why go thru all of the programming when it has already been done before? Re-inventing the wheel is not what programming is all about.. So if he wants a program, by all means, let him have it... if he wants to learn, he can study code.. that's the best way to learn..