Talk:Pi

Pi=3 from the bible? no

The history section of this article claims a source, which makes an inaccurate assumption from the Bronze Sea description in 1Kings 7:23-26. The description in 1Kings includes that "the walls were sloped like a lily" showing taper.

If the bronze sea was vertically walled, pi=3 would stand, but it's approximately a frustum of a cone. A simple description is shown at the following link: http://www.yihyeh.com/the-bronze-sea.html

Since the value of a bath is known, and the number of baths that the bronze sea held is known, determining the volume provides a great estimate of the value of a biblical cubit. The key is that the simplest number of measurements is given, as expected when manufacturing screws or any crude form that was tapered. No938 (talk) 04:16, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

In the Bible both the diameter and the circumference is given as integers. These are clearly approximate values. There is no indication that the circumference was calculated by multiplying the diameter by a universal constant. The authors just wanted to indicate that the bronze sea was huge. Obviously, Christian fundamentalist do not like this place in the Bible and have all kinds of ways to explain it away, but, please, do not let such discussions invade Wikipedia. Entropeter (talk) 04:31, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The inclusion of the Biblical implied value of pi is reasonable, but needs to be written better. It's been discussed since ancient times (see Rabbi Nehemiah, AD 150), so having a mention of it here seems appropriate. — Loadmaster (talk) 18:36, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Hatnotes

I've added a hatnote to deal with capital Pi. Frankly, the lack of a hatnote to this effect was disgraceful... many readers of Wikipedia have not completed high school mathematics, and might be looking for this meaning; Most probably have, and would laugh at the current redirect even now we explain it.

See also Template talk:Hatnote templates documentation#Is there a suitable template for this. Andrewa (talk) 19:41, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The hatnote is redundant, as that topic is linked to in Pi (disambiguation), which in turn is already linked from here. — Edokter (talk) — 22:28, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. The point of the encyclopedia is to make information available. As it is, someone who runs across Π for the first time and searches for it will get to this page, with an unhelpful message saying Redirected from Π. They must then guess that it's the wrong page before they will go to the other uses link, which they are most ill-equipped to guess if they haven't seen or at least haven't understood this notation before. The current redirect is only there due to an unfortunate technical limitation; An explicit hatnote will mostly contain the damage. Andrewa (talk) 01:38, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I think a whole line for one use of Π (and there are many uses for Π) is overkill, but I do see the issue raised, so I've expanded the hatnote slightly to point out that readers should visit the dabpage if they got here via π or Π and weren't looking for 3.14.... This would not normally work except for the shortness of "pi, π and Π", so seems like a good compromise.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:18, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I like JohnBlackburne's solution - comprehensive without being cumbersome.--A bit iffy (talk) 02:39, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

It is certainly an improvement on what there was before. My main problem with it is that it doesn't explicitly deal with the totally incorrect redirect from Π to this article. Pi the title is OK as the redirect target for Π, but this article is not. Its topic is unrelated to the redirected term.

I wonder whether in view of this technical problem, perhaps this might be a case where making the article title recognizable to readers, unambiguous (my emphasis) might trump other considerations, and the DAB be moved to Pi undisambiguated. The logic goes like this: The primary meaning of Pi may well be the constant, but in Wikipedia using that article name leads to an ambiguity best dealt with by a DAB.

To sum up, a definite improvement but still not IMO ideal. Andrewa (talk) 19:47, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Agree that the other uses of Π deserve consideration. Andrewa (talk) 19:47, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately that π and Π link to the same page is unavoidable as WP ignores the capitalisation of the initial letter. The question of which page belongs at π is a different one, and depends on which if anything is the primary topic for pi and π. One thing we can look at for this is pageview statistics:

Pi has been viewed 273502 times in the last 30 days

Pi (disambiguation) has been viewed 4450 times in the last 30 days

Π (the redirect) has been viewed 1689 times in the last 30 days

The current page is overwhelmingly the article sought by users reaching here: few visit the disambiguation page after, and under 1% use the redirect Π to get here. So the current page is the primary topic and there is very little evidence readers are looking for another topic instead of the one here.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 20:24, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I think we already knew most of that. I am still uncomfortable that Π currently redirects to a page on an unrelated topic, and which gives so little help to those who follow this redirect in good faith, and amazed that nobody else seems to care. But we seem to have a rough consensus that it doesn't matter. So be it; Let's move on. Andrewa (talk) 11:11, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The pi value was given by the Indian mathematician ARYABHATA.

Capital question

In the article it says:

When used as a symbol for the mathematical constant, the Greek letter (π) is not capitalized at the beginning of a sentence. The capital letter Π (Pi) has a completely different mathematical meaning; it is used for expressing the product of a sequence.

Yet in the article, the capital 'Π' instead of 'π' is used consistently at the start of sentences. Do we not contradict ourselves? Is there a problem with {{pi}}? Kleuske (talk) 09:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

There is a problem with {{pi}}, which is that it's used at all. The font-mixing thing, inline, is just bad and should be dropped. --Trovatore (talk) 10:20, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Opinion noted. Note that {{pi}} is used to diplay the mathematical symbol, not the Greek letter. If it shows too big, have a look at this note. — Edokter (talk) — 13:52, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not that it looks too big. It just looks bad, mixing serif and sans-serif typefaces inline like that.

Mathematical typesetting has never "distinguished between the mathematical symbol and the Greek letter", certainly not by changing typeface. --Trovatore (talk) 20:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

This is an old discussion. Math has traditionally been typeset in serif, simply because a lot of characters and symbols in serif lose distinguishable features necessary to tell them apart (remember I vs. l, or rather I vs. l). Math is just pretty useless in sans-serif. — Edokter (talk) — 21:13, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to using css to put whole math articles into serif, but note that the Beamer class, which is the most used way of doing mathematical slides, uses sans-serif. The idea of using typeface to distinguish between the letter pi and the symbol pi seems to be an innovation here, and it's an unwelcome one. The letter is the symbol; it's always been used like that. Using typeface to distinguish them reminds me of overly neat-minded schemes like the upright d for differential. --Trovatore (talk) 21:35, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Where is the capital incorrectly used? I've had a quick look at the article and can't see any instances of it, and {{pi}} works fine at the start of a sentence. The only place Wikipedia enforces capitalisation is in article names which always begin with a capital. If this is a problem {{DISPLAYTITLE}} should be used.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 13:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

First sentence, first letter. Second sentence, first letter. Third sentence halfway through. In fact every pi shows up as a capital pi. Same thing in Tau (2π), btw, where π is capitalized in the title, too, though 'τ' is unaffected. Kleuske (talk) 17:16, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

How this this π look? Are you sure it is a capital, and not just an enlarged small pi? What are the font setting in your browser? — Edokter (talk) — 17:25, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

{{frac}}

As far as I can tell, this hasn't been discussed recently, but I thought use of {{frac}}, such as in the section Pi#Estimating the value, is discouraged in mathematical articles, per WP:MOSMATH. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Discouraged, yes. Not forbidden. The same format was already in use (as if it were substed), along with some instances of frac, so no change there. I'm building a new version of frac anyway to display real fractions. — Edokter (talk) — 16:32, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a bot to search for substituted usage, but your additions are the only place in the article where the template is used, and it probably would be OK in the infobox to use any format; I'd probably replace it by ${\frac {3}{1}},{\frac {22}{7}},{\frac {333}{106}},{\frac {355}{113}},\cdots$, to save horizontal real estate. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:44, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not otherwise in use in the article, unless additional spaces are in the < sub> tag, such as < sub > — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:46, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Go to this revision and count again; you will find five ohter instances of frac. Prior to my edit, the ones I placed were done using sup and sub, with the exact same result. — Edokter (talk) — 16:56, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

(Fixed oldid...) No, the only uses of < sub> (referring to a fraction) or {{frac}} are the ones you changed. I still don't think they should be there, it's marginally acceptable in the infobox, but not in the text. Still, I won't revert again, until some discussion ensues. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:07, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, there's no reason the {{frac}} template should be in this article, at all. If no reason for the usage is given, I will assume it was originally added by mistake or contrary to guidelines, and remove it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:43, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Since when does one need a reason? That's backward thinking here. Anyway, see Template:Frac/testcases. — Edokter (talk) — 10:25, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Well I certainly think the frac template used in the text looks bad, I'd prefer just 22/7 etc. As to the box can't it use <math> formatting and that would look better. So overall I see no use for it and it is discouraged so it's okay for people to remove them. Dmcq (talk) 10:42, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes it does look better I think with ⁠22/7⁠ etc. Dmcq (talk) 14:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 21 December 2011

hi i want to edit this wiki page as i have the first 100,000 didgets of pi in a txt document which i can put a link to on my current website http://skweekz.sexyi.am/upload/PI.txt

thanks for reading

p.s i would be happier if you would to deny this and edit the page yourself if thats no problem.

best regards richard aka skweekz

Skweekz (talk) 14:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the article needs a link to the series; I believe that there are plenty in the article already. Thanks for wanting to contribute, though. :) Disavian (talk) 15:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 21 December 2011

Typo for the caption under the digits of pi: "An calculation" should be "A calculation".

Deadwisdom (talk) 22:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Done. You could have edited it yourself; the article is only semi-protected. — Edokter (talk) — 23:16, 21 December 2011 (UTC)