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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More
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Calculus and the Infinite Series
In 14 24, the persian astronomer, jamshid al kashi calculated pie to 16 digits by calculating the equivalent of a polygon with 30 octilian sides. In 15 96, dutch mathematician ludolf von colen managed to calculate pie to 20 digits and later 35 digits,. And this was pretty much limit for using polygons, as it was simply too hard to calculate that much further. The next big innovation in calculating pie was the use of infinite series. This technique is much easier than trying to determine the area of an ever larger polygon. There are actually many different infinite series that converge to some multiple of pie.
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