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How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need?

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 14 2019, @11:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-the-combination-to-my-luggage! dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/

Earlier this week, we received this question from a fan on Facebook who wondered how many decimals of the mathematical constant pi (π) NASA-JPL scientists and engineers use when making calculations:

Does JPL only use 3.14 for its pi calculations? Or do you use more decimals like say: 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102701938521105559644622948954930381964428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360

We posed this question to the director and chief engineer for NASA's Dawn mission, Marc Rayman. Here's what he said:

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by anotherblackhat on Thursday August 15 2019, @01:53PM (5 children)

    by anotherblackhat (4722) on Thursday August 15 2019, @01:53PM (#880571)

    640 digits of pi ought to be enough for anybody.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15 2019, @02:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 15 2019, @02:03PM (#880578)

    In what number base?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 15 2019, @03:13PM (3 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday August 15 2019, @03:13PM (#880613) Journal

    That's 640k digits.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 16 2019, @12:15AM (2 children)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Friday August 16 2019, @12:15AM (#880786) Journal

      What the hell is a "k digit"? What is this, base 21?

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 16 2019, @02:09AM (1 child)

        by Immerman (3985) on Friday August 16 2019, @02:09AM (#880830)

        Dude, your mind is going to be blown the fist time you encounter km or kCal...

        SI prefixes - they're not just for SI units anymore.

        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 16 2019, @08:21AM

          by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Friday August 16 2019, @08:21AM (#880953) Homepage
          And can cause chaos when applied to currencies! OK, $100M seems clear, but is $100G a thousand times larger or smaller?
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves