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How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need?

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 14 2019, @11:59PM   
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:

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Original Submission

• Re:640 Re:640 (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.

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• Re:640 (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 16 2019, @08:21AM

  by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> 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

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