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

> I always thought pi is 22/7

Then you misremembered (or had bad teachers). I clearly remember I think in 4th grade that we were taught to use 22/7 as an approximation.

Pi is simply how many times the diameter wraps around the circumference of the circle.

You can get a decent amount of decimals by doing a physical experiment with string and whatnot, but to get past a handful of decimals you’d need to do math.