Nicholas Sze of Yahoo Finds Two-Quadrillionth Digit of Pi

gregg writes "A researcher has calculated the 2,000,000,000,000,000th digit of pi — and a few digits either side of it. Nicholas Sze, of technology firm Yahoo, determined that the digit — when expressed in binary — is 0."

Comments

Re:So, what is the digit in decimal?

[Anonymous Coward]

We only know how to calculate it in binary (or any base that is a power of 2). You can't convert to decimal without know all the rest of the digits.

Re:So, what is the digit in decimal?

[Haxamanish]

We only know how to calculate it in binary (or any base that is a power of 2). You can't convert to decimal without know all the rest of the digits.

Parent is correct, digits of pi can be calculated independently in base 2, 4, 8, 16 or 2^n since the 1990s. So, it is possible to calculate the 2,000,000,000,000,000th number of pi without calculating the digits before that one. Now, if we want to calculate the digit in decimal (or converse the binary digit to decimal), we need to calculate all of the two-quadrillion digits. Knowing this digit is in itself not very interesting.

Re:Last Digit?

[by (1706743)]

Pi is NOT irrational! It is transcendental. Look it up!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_number :

All real transcendental numbers are irrational, since all rational numbers are algebraic.

Re:an so are an infinite other digits in that numb

[Tacvek]

The hexadecimal digit extraction formula for PI (that allows you to skip calculating the previous hex digits) is already known. It can calulcuate the N'th hexadecimaldigit of Pi without calculating most of the previous digits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey%E2%80%93Borwein%E2%80%93Plouffe_formula

A slower generalized version that can extract the n'th digit of Pi in any base (including decimal) has also been found: http://web.archive.org/web/19990116223856/www.lacim.uqam.ca/plouffe/Simon/articlepi.html