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A non-violent anarchist Mathematics teacher and Christian who has views about everything under the sun.

Tag: Pi

  • Last Call on the Whirligig

    Forms of Complex Numbers In the previous post, The Tripartite Fugue, we finally obtained the exponential form for complex numbers. As mentioned in the previous post, we will conclude our series on complex numbers today. Here I wish to explore a couple of aspects of complex numbers that become evident from the exponential form. I…

  • Descending the Ivory Tower

    Coming Back Full Circle This is the final post in this series of posts on π. We began with A Piece of the Pi, where we looked at the early ways of approximating the value of π based on circumscribing and inscribing a circle with regular polygons. We saw that this method, while perfectly sound, had…

  • The Rewards of Repetition

    Coming Back Half Circle We are in the middle of a series of posts on π. We began with A Piece of the Pi and followed it up with Off On a Tangent. In the first post I demonstrated that the definition of π is inadequate for the task of approximating the value of π.…

  • Off On A Tangent

    A Slice of the Pi We are in the middle of a study of π. In the previous post, A Piece of the Pi, we introduced π. We saw how its definition itself, based on measurement, is inadequate for calculating the value of π to a great accuracy. We then saw how mathematicians circumvented this…

  • A Piece of the Pi

    Definitionally Limited Almost everyone who has studied beyond Grade 4 has probably heard of the mathematical constant π. Students are told that π represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. That is all well and good. But how do we calculate it? I mean, we could potentially use a piece…