Celebrating pi day with a new record

Submitted by Marianne on March 14, 2019

Today is the day the world celebrates the number $\pi $. That’s because it’s March 14th, which in the US is written as 3/14, giving you the first three digits of this beloved number. But of course, they are only the first three digits of an infinite number: $\pi $ is irrational which means that its decimal expansion is infinite.

This is why it's rather fitting that Google employee Emma Haruka Iwao today announced a new record: using Google's cloud computing service she has calculated the first 31 trillion digits of $\pi $. Previously only the first 22 trillion digits were known. The calculation required 170TB of data and took 25 virtual machines 121 days to complete.

It's a great present for all lovers of $\pi $. Happy $\pi $ day and thank you Emma Haruka Iwao!

You can find out more about $\pi $ and why you would want to calculate it to so many digits in the video below.

Comments

Submitted by Bernardo on March 14, 2019

Look at the duration time of this video... Great.