Sky Blue 1200 Pieces of pi Poster

Twelve-hundred digits of pi are listed on this design. In keeping with the nature of pi an illusion of circular curves appears in the center. π (sometimes written pi) is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of any Euclidean circle's circumference to its diameter. π is approximately equal to 3.14. Many formulae in mathematics, science, and engineering involve π, which makes it one of the most important mathematical constants. For instance, the area of a circle is equal to π times the square of the radius of the circle. Throughout the history of mathematics, there has been much effort to determine π more accurately and to understand its nature; fascination with the number has even carried over into non-mathematical culture. It is, perhaps, the most common ground between mathematicians and non-mathematicians. Reports on the latest, most-precise calculation of π are common news items; the record as of September 2011, if verified, stands at 5 trillion decimal digits. Probably because of the simplicity of its definition, the concept of π has become entrenched in popular culture to a degree far greater than almost any other mathematical construct. π has been used as a pivitol plot point in Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, The Simpsons, and Carl Sagan's novel "Contact", and pi Day is celebrated annually on March 14th (the 14th day of the 3rd month). π is an irrational number, which means that its value cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction having integers in both the numerator and denominator (unlike 22/7). Consequently, its decimal representation never ends and never repeats. π is also a transcendental number, which implies, among other things, that no finite sequence of algebraic operations on integers (powers, roots, sums, etc.) can render its value; proving this fact was a significant mathematical achievement of the 19th century. Because π is an irrational number, its decimal representation does not repeat, and therefore does not terminate. This sequence of non-repeating digits has fascinated mathematicians and laymen alike, and much effort over the last few centuries has been put into computing ever more of these digits and investigating π's properties. Despite much analytical work, and supercomputer calculations that have determined over 10 trillion digits of the decimal representation of π, no simple base-10 pattern in the digits has ever been found. Digits of the decimal representation of π are available on many web pages, and there is software for calculating the decimal representation of π to billions of digits on any personal computer. Well before computers were used in calculating π, memorizing a record number of digits had become an obsession for some people. In 2006, Akira Haraguchi, a retired Japanese engineer, claimed to have recited 100,000 decimal places. This, however, has yet to be verified by Guinness World Records. The Guinness-recognized record for remembered digits of π is 67,890 digits, held by Lu Chao, a 24-year-old graduate student from China. It took him 24 hours and 4 minutes to recite to the 67,890th decimal place of π without an error. There are many ways to memorize π, including the use of "piems", which are poems that represent π in a way such that the length of each word (in letters) represents a digit. Here is an example of a piem, originally devised by Sir James Jeans: How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. The first word has three letters, the second word has one, the third has four, the fourth has one, the fifth has five, and so on. The Cadaeic Cadenza contains the first 3835 digits of π in this manner. Piems are related to the entire field of humorous yet serious study that involves the use of mnemonic techniques to remember the digits of π, known as piphilology. In other languages there are similar methods of memorization. However, this method proves inefficient for large memorizations of π. Other methods include remembering patterns in the numbers and the method of loci.