Eli5: I always thought pi is 22/7, but recently i found out that 22/7 is a number that is pretty close to pi, not pi itself. Then how do mathematicians found more “pi” ?

Question

Eli5: I always thought pi is 22/7, but recently i found out that 22/7 is a number that is pretty close to pi, not pi itself. Then how do mathematicians found more “pi” ?

In: 167

Answer 1

We have many ways to calculate pi.

The first way was to take a circles circumference and divide it by its diameter.

Since then, we have found multiple infinite sums that result in pi. We use these infinite sums to find pi to a greater and greater level of precision.

I don’t remember the formula we use, but we only need ti calculate it out to about n=6 (six stages of the infinite sum) to get an insane level of precision. Running the infinite sum out further just gets us even closer to pi, and we dedicate a ton of computing power to this all the time.