We have read about Pi day. We celebrate this day on 14 March.

What is Pi?

Pi is the number we get when we divide the circumference of any circle by its own diameter. This value will always be the same, whichever circle we take. The symbol of pi is the Greek letter “π”.

Pi is an irrational number. This means if we write it in decimal form, the digits after the point will go on endlessly (that too without repeating). But in short, we simply write its value as 3.14.

While humans regularly have competitions to find as many decimals as possible, a supercomputer has just created a new record. Scientists in Switzerland have used the supercomputer to calculate pi to its first 62.8 trillion decimal places! The supercomputer took 108 days and 9 hours to achieve this feat.

Currently, a man named Timothy Mullican in the US holds the Guinness World Record for calculating the highest number of digits for pi. He used his personal computer to calculate it to 50 trillion decimal places. It took him 303 days.

As for the new record by the supercomputer, Guinness World Records is yet to confirm it.

Why is it important to know the digits (decimals) of pi?

Experts say that knowing more digits of pi isn’t that important for mathematics. But calculating the value of pi is an important test used to test the processing power of computers.

 

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