Happy Pi Day.

The advent of digital computers in the 20th century led to an increased rate of new π calculation records. John von Neumann et al. used ENIAC to compute 2037 digits of π in 1949, a calculation that took 70 hours.

In[2]:= Timing[N[Pi,2037]]
Out[2]=
{0.000024,3.
1415926535897932384626433832795028841971
6939937510582097494459230781640628620899
8628034825342117067982148086513282306647
0938446095505822317253594081284811174502
8410270193852110555964462294895493038196
4428810975665933446128475648233786783165
2712019091456485669234603486104543266482
1339360726024914127372458700660631558817
4881520920962829254091715364367892590360
0113305305488204665213841469519415116094
3305727036575959195309218611738193261179
3105118548074462379962749567351885752724
8912279381830119491298336733624406566430
8602139494639522473719070217986094370277
0539217176293176752384674818467669405132
0005681271452635608277857713427577896091
7363717872146844090122495343014654958537
1050792279689258923542019956112129021960
8640344181598136297747713099605187072113
4999999837297804995105973173281609631859
5024459455346908302642522308253344685035
2619311881710100031378387528865875332083
8142061717766914730359825349042875546873
1159562863882353787593751957781857780532
1712268066130019278766111959092164201989
3809525720106548586327886593615338182796
8230301952035301852968995773622599413891
2497217752834791315155748572424541506959
5082953311686172785588907509838175463746
4939319255060400927701671139009848824012
8583616035637076601047101819429555961989
4676783744944825537977472684710404753464
6208046684259069491293313677028989152104
7521620569660240580381501935112533824300
3558764024749647326391419927260426992279
6782354781636009341721641219924586315030
2861829745557067498385054945885869269956
9092721079750930295532116534498720275596
0236480665499119881834797753566369807426
5425278625518184175746728909777727938000
8164706001614524919217321721477235014144
1973568548161361157352552133475741849468
4385233239073941433345477624168625189835
6948556209921922218427255025425688767179
0494601653466804988627232791786085784383
8279679766814541009538837863609506800642
2512520511739298489608412848862694560424
1965285022210661186306744278622039194945
0471237137869609563643719172874677646575
7396241389086583264599581339047802759009
946576407895126946839835259570982582}

That 0.000024 is the time in seconds it took Mathematica 6 For Students to calculate 2,037 digits of Pi on a MacBook with a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.