Timeline for How many digits of Pi did the old Egyptians know?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 16, 2018 at 18:36 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| May 16, 2018 at 13:57 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | @Mark - The use of decimal digits is obviously a modern affectation, but one that is very useful to us in quantifying an order-of-magnitude accuracy for their estimates of Pi. Honestly, the ancients' fractional method of doing math is arguably more accurate, as it can express some values that decimal notation has trouble with. Of course that advantage is utterly negated when we are dealing with a transcendental number like pi. | |
| May 16, 2018 at 13:50 | comment | added | T.E.D.♦ | @OlePetersen - It doesn't explain that, because the current narrative is that most likely they didn't. By the time of Archemedes the Egyptians were more or less an integrated part of a Mediterranean knowledge community, and thus any discovery by a dude in Sicily became theirs to use as well. Likewise any discovery an Egyptian had already made would have been available to Archimedes, and he could have spent his time working on something else. | |
| May 16, 2018 at 12:48 | comment | added | Ole Petersen | I appreciate your answer, but it does not explain how they came to 3,141. We can conclude that they knew at least four digits. Possibly more, as there is a measurement uncertainty. | |
| May 16, 2018 at 0:54 | comment | added | Mark | In terms of accuracy, "digits of pi" isn't meaningful until you develop a decimal system of notation. The Egyptians had a "pi" that was 0.6% too high, while the Babylonians were 0.5% too low. | |
| May 15, 2018 at 19:09 | history | edited | T.E.D.♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 425 characters in body
|
| May 15, 2018 at 18:44 | history | edited | T.E.D.♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 35 characters in body
|
| May 15, 2018 at 18:39 | history | answered | T.E.D.♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |