Xref: utzoo comp.compression:235 sci.math:16405 Newsgroups: comp.compression,sci.math Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!linus!linus!gauss!bs From: bs@gauss.mitre.org (Robert D. Silverman) Subject: Re: Program for Calculating PI Message-ID: <1991Apr4.150053.29873@linus.mitre.org> Sender: news@linus.mitre.org (News Service) Nntp-Posting-Host: gauss.mitre.org Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730 References: <1991Apr3.014832.15021@linus.mitre.org> <1991Apr4.132101.9623@cs.dal.ca> Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1991 15:00:53 GMT In article <1991Apr4.132101.9623@cs.dal.ca> digdon@ug.cs.dal.ca (Mike Digdon) writes: :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.. ------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know about everyone else, but the attitude implied by this last sentence frightens me. No wonder today's undergraduates are ill-prepared. The way to learn how to compute Pi is to study the math and the algorithms, not to look at someone else's code. As for not reinventing the wheel, I agree, but...... Why does one need a black box program to compute the digits of Pi??? Why repeat calculations that have already been done (and published!) before??? The simple act of running such a program is in fact reinventing the wheel.... If it's the digits one wants, then they are available. If one wants the program for the pleasure of computing something, that I can understand. But why something that's been done thousands of time??? Why not something new?? How about a program to compute one of the less famous transcendental constants? And.... (pardon my language) WHAT IS SO FUCKING SPECIAL ABOUT COMPUTING PI AS OPPOSED TO SOME OTHER NUMBER??? -- Bob Silverman #include Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730 "You can lead a horse's ass to knowledge, but you can't make him think"