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

Pi is defined as the ratio between the circumference of a circle and the diameter of a circle. The problem is that this number is known to be what’s called an irrational number, which is a number that cannot be described as a fraction of two integers. More simply, it has an infinite, non-repeating pattern of numbers after the decimal point. For practical everyday use, we use 3.14 or 22/7 as approximations, but that’s all they are: approximations.