E.g. how can we say that a circle has an area of 25.00cm^2 if pi is irrational?? How can a circle, a closed shape, have a limited area if pi is unlimited??
In: Mathematics
25.00cm² doesn’t mean *exactly* 25cm². It means somewhere between 24.995cm² and 25.005cm². If we used more digits of pi (and knew the radius/diameter precisely), then we could get better precision. But in practice we only use as many as we need. Since every digit gives us 10x as much precision, we only ever need the first 30 or so digits. That’s enough to calculate the circumference of the entire observable universe to be accurate to the size of a hydrogen atom.
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