Message Boards Message Boards

0
|
3828 Views
|
3 Replies
|
4 Total Likes
View groups...
Share
Share this post:

[?] Get the Feynman Point of Pi with N?

Posted 7 years ago

A sequence of six 9s occurs in the decimal representation of ?, starting at the 762nd decimal place. These six 9s have come to be called the Feynman point.

N[Pi, 769] ends with .....7211349999998

but

N[Pi, 768] ends with ....721135000000

What gives?

POSTED BY: Nelson Zink
3 Replies
Posted 7 years ago

From the documentation:

"Pi can be evaluated to any numerical precision using N."

Doesn't seem like approximation is used.

POSTED BY: Nelson Zink

If you have an exact number (like) Pi, then N can only give an approximation. And note that evaluate something with numerical precision x is the same as giving an approximation, that is the same.

As Gianluca says, this:

721134999999

is a worse approximation than:

721135000000

If you want to be sure to get non-rounded numbers, get a bunch more:

First[RealDigits[N[Pi, 800]]][[762 ;;]]
POSTED BY: Sander Huisman

If you allow just 768 digits,the one ending in 721135000000 is a better approximation of Pi than the one ending in 721134999999.

POSTED BY: Gianluca Gorni
Reply to this discussion
Community posts can be styled and formatted using the Markdown syntax.
Reply Preview
Attachments
Remove
or Discard

Group Abstract Group Abstract