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

Oh yeah?

[The_mad_linguist]

Well, the 243,000,500,000,000,000,002th digit of pi is "4".

Go on, prove me wrong.

Re:Oh yeah?

[Dthief]

I would argue the opposite

Re:Oh yeah?

[blair1q]

No it's not. Because I say so.

(See, I have a 90% chance of being right and you have a 10% chance of being right, so I win Monte Carlo testing, and I provided more evidence than you, so I win in a civil suit.)

Re:Oh yeah?

[Kinky Bass Junk]

He might be the 2th fairy.

Re:Oh yeah?

[cmdahler]

Really? You "could care less"? So... that means that you actually do care, right? I mean, since you just said it is possible for you to care less than you do. I'm just sayin'... Just for your edification, the proper way to say what you are trying to say is, "I could not care less." And with regard to the subject at hand in this thread, the idea that someone's poor English skills could have any bearing whatsoever on his or her skills at mathematics is just laughable and shows how little anyone presuming such preposterously arrogant nonsense actually knows about mathematics or the history of the brilliant minds in non-English-speaking cultures who have contributed to it. In other words, total bullshit.

Re:Oh yeah?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't handle the 2th!

You fail math forever

[$RANDOMLUSER]

the digit - when expressed in binary - is 0.

*facepalm* So that's 9 in decimal, right?

Re:You fail math forever

[jd]

Are you sure? 0, for large values of 0, approaches 1, for small values of 1.

If zero equals nothing then...

[Daneurysm]

...move along people, nothing to see here.

Put to good use

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to know they're putting those idle datacenters to good use. It's not like Yahoo has any real users anymore to generate load.

Last Digit?

[fandingo]

"Interestingly, by some algebraic manipulations, (our) formula can compute pi with some bits skipped; in other words, it allows computing specific bits of pi," Mr Sze explained to BBC News.

So why don't they just use their formula to compute the last digit of Pi already?
That would be the rational approach. Who cares about the two quadrillionth digit??

Re:Last Digit?

[JesseL]

Irrational numbers care not for your "rational approach".

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: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.

In binary?

[silverpig]

Geez, even I could have gotten it right half the time.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Word. This discovery is useless. Now, if he'd managed to prove that the digit, when expressed in binary, is 2... That'd be something to shout about!

What are the odds?

[grot]

the digit — when expressed in binary — is 0.

Jeez, what are the odds of that?

Re:So, what is the digit in decimal?

[Gerald]

It is, but it's encoded in UTF-35, not ASCII.

A serious question

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I've always wondered about these ridiculously precise values of pi - doesn't that imply a measurement (of circumference or diameter) smaller than the Planck length? What's the point of 2 trillion decimals of precision?

Re:A serious question

[Surt]

That's a rather ... odd ... reaction to my post. You're hoping to eliminate my superior genes so we don't wipe you out?

Re:A serious question

[PPH]

A 'mine's bigger' sort of competition,

Would that be diameter or circumference?

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:an so are an infinite other digits in that numb

[MightyMartian]

the digit -- when expressed in binary -- is 0.

Amazing, so is Yahoo's profit projections within five years!

Re:Confirmation ?

[Nimey]

Netcraft.

Re:Uh, so what? There are an infinite number of th

[Surt]

It's actually 13 orders of magnitude less significant than the 200th.

fine, and I have calculated the last digit of pi.

[Nadaka]

It is 1 in binary.

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

[quenda]

The computation took 23 days on 1,000 of Yahoo's computers, racking up the equivalent of more than 500 years of a single computer's efforts.

And before answering, the computer paused and said, "You're not going to like it ..."

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