Happy Pi Day. Can You Calculate Pi by Drawing a Circle?

Science picircledefVia WIRED:

‘…the US is pretty much the only place that uses the middle-endian date format of month/day/year. If you go with the little-endian format of day/month/year, then today is 14/3—which is obviously not pi. (In that case I suggest July 22, since the fraction 7/22 is a fairly decent approximation for pi.)

Anyway, my traditional way of celebrating Pi Day is to find a new way each year of calculating a numerical value for pi. It’s just what I do. I’ve been at this for quite some time now, so here are some of my favorites:

Finding pi using random numbers (and Python)

Determining the value of pi using a mass oscillating on a spring

Actually measuring the circumference and diameter of real circles I have even more Pi Day posts here.

But now let’s try this a new way. Let’s see how close we can get to pi by drawing a circle.

Here’s how this will work. You draw a circle. From that circle, you can determine both the circumference and the radius. Then the value of pi would be the circumference divided by twice the radius. Simple, right?…’

Posted in Uncategorized