What is the Value of Pi?

Date: 19 Jun 1995 12:41:11 -0400
From: william lamb
Subject: Value of Pi

What is the value of pi?  What is the square root of pi?

Date: 19 Jun 1995 13:58:04 -0400
From: Dr. Ethan
Subject: Value of Pi

Hey neat question.

        The value of Pi is a really interesting problem.  It is confusing
because Pi is an irrational number, which means that it cannot be 
expressed as a ratio of two integers.  So the easiest thing to say is 
that Pi is the number that is the ratio between the diameter and the 
circumference of a circle.

However for the sake of usefulness people often need to approximate Pi.  
For my purposes I usually don't need a very good approximation so I
use 3.14159, which is really pretty good, but if you want a better one you
can use a computer to get it, e.g. 3.14159265358979323846.  
That was given to me by a program called Mathematica.

So, once you have an approximation you can just take the square root 
to get an approximation for the square root of pi.  

1.7724538509055160273  is what mathematica gives me.

Hope that helps,

        Ethan - Doctor On Call