What is Pi?

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In light of this day (it's still 3/14 where I am as of this typing), this is what I ask, this eternal Q, "What is Pi?"

Nobody knows what it is. It is a number. It is a nice pastry, too. Or it can be a meat pie, if you live in England or Australia. While I am not a mathingly-inclined person (and I'm Asian, on top of that, so I've dispelled the myth that ALL Asians are good at math pretty much FOREVER), will we, as a species, EVER find out the true meaning of this mystery? I say, who knows, probably, probably not.

This is E2LA wishing you all a happy Stonehenge Day, and may your life be long and unpredictable as Pi.

Pi is defined for circles on a plane. Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Yes pi exists. Pi is not a rational number so it cannot be written as a finite or repeating decimal fraction.

Pi is also a black and white, independent movie as well. An interesting one at that, but a little gory at times. The above poster is correct; the ancient greeks knew of this number and did not like it, as it is an irrational number. They liked rational numbers. I think the ancient Egyptians knew of it as well, and gave an approximation of 22/7. But me? I like cherry pie! (sings) She's my cherry pie, with a smile on her face 10 miles wide...just kidding. I'm not a fan of Warrant, but that song was so fitting. lol

Perhaps this graphic illustration from Wikipedia might help.

Well, it's the square root of 6 times the sum of all the squares of the inverses of natural numbers.

It's 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286 208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481 117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233 786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006 606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146 951941511609433057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548074462379962749 567351885752724891227938183011949129833673362440656643086021394946395224737190 702179860943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132000568127145263560827 785771342757789609173637178721468440901224953430146549585371050792279689258923 542019956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960518707211349999998372978049 951059731732816096318595024459455346908302642522308253344685035261931188171010 003137838752886587533208381420617177669147303598253490428755468731159562863882..

Why?

Pi is not something that occurs to me in every day life. It's too complicated for me. I learnt it in a maths lesson at school once, and all I can remember is it has something to do with the number 3.14.

I like a song about Pi, not so much for the subject, but just the way the tune goes. I have listened to it a lot, although I still can't remember the numbers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtgfsRH3H3U&hd=1

OK, why all the digits?

Short answer: Because I can.

Long answer: I have a nasty habit of doing strange things for fun, technical stuff. My Fluke voltmeter measures to 1mV (0.001V) which to me wasn't enough so I spent weeks building a voltmeter that could measure to 0.000001V. When I did my degree I built a calculator for my final year project but rather than use decimal it used Roman numerals, so if you really wanted to work out XVII-V then I was your man. This is more complicated than you think because the Romans didn't have zero but I figured out how to make it work anyway, just for fun. As demonstrated by Cmdr Spock in Star Trek TOS computing Pi is a great stress test for computers so when someone asked what Pi was I downloaded a program in C++, compiled it, and ran it for a while on one of my computers. The result is what you see, Pi to more digits than you will ever need.

Sorry, math ret*d here!