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Poetry competition: π-ku

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Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Since some people might be looking for small momentary diversions around now to take their mind off things, we’re running a little poetry competition!

π calculated to 31 trillion digits

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This Pi Day, Emma Haruka Iwao has announced calculation of \(\pi\) to \( \pi \times 10^{13} = 31,\!415,\!926,\!535,\!897 \) digits, exceeding the previous record of 22 trillion digits set in November 2016.

This used y-cruncher, running Chudnovky’s algorithm. Chudnovky’s algorithm is \( \mathcal{O}(n(\log n)^3)\), making each record more impressive. In a blog post, Emma writes about the benefits of using a cloud cluster, saying the calculation ran on a virtual machine cluster, using

25 nodes for 111.8 days, or 2,795 machine-days (7.6 machine-years), during which time Google Cloud performed thousands of live migrations uninterrupted and with no impact on the calculation process.

Ways to access the digits and fun related bits and bobs are outlined in the blog post.

More information

Pi in the sky: Calculating a record-breaking 31.4 trillion digits of Archimedes’ constant on Google Cloud by Emma Haruka Iwao.

Emma Haruka Iwao smashes pi world record with Google help, BBC News.

I’m streaming digits of π for π day

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It’s π eve, and I’ve had a silly idea: I’m going to take the ridiculous website I made to show all the digits of π, and stream it scrolling indefinitely through them over the internet.

Starting at midnight GMT on 2019-03-14, the stream below will start scrolling down through the digits of π:

I had this idea this morning, and it’s running on my desktop PC which I’ll be away from until 8am tomorrow, so I won’t be surprised if something goes wrong.

But if it doesn’t: hooray!

Doodling for π day

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It’s that time of year again – 3.14 (March 14th), a.k.a π day, is just around the corner, and if you want to do something fun on the day, now’s the time to plan it. One nice way to celebrate this brilliant infinite string of digits is by creating π-inspired art, and we’ve spotted a couple of relevant links if that’s your jam.

  • Maths learning organisation (and Carnival of Mathematics stalwarts) Ganit Charcha are running a competition for schools in India, challenging them to ‘Doodle for π‘ – students should take inspiration from a mathematical concept, and create a doodle/image to submit. The competition invites creativity and imagination, and runs until 12th March.
  • If you’re not in India, you can still use π as inspiration for artworks – Think Maths speaker and Aperiodical Math-off contestant Zoe Griffiths has put together a set of ideas for how to use π to create beautiful pictures, to decorate your home, school or office.

Carnival of Mathematics 158

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Carnival of Mathematics LogoThis is the 158th Carnival of Mathematics, a monthly round-up of interesting maths bits from across the internet. Convention dictates that I now therefore specify some interesting facts about the number 158. Unfortunately I am writing this on a train with no internet access, which will make fulfilling this obligation more than usually challenging.

πkm run challenge – completed

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As a final update, I’ve now finished my πkm running quest. I’m very tired now! Thanks to everyone who has donated at pikm.run, spread the word about it, come running with me or otherwise facilitated this.

Here’s the final set of photos and video clips from the last week, and for the data fiends among you, a sneaky look at my spreadsheet of runs. With a graph, as requested by Hannah Fry.

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