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Volume 55 - Issue 392 - March 1971

Contents

Page 3 of 3

5. Reviews

6. Return to 1971

  • Shanks, Ferguson and π

  • T. A. A. Broadbent
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    03 November 2016, pp. 243-248

  • Fifty or sixty years ago, any forward schoolboy (to borrow a phrase from Macaulay) knew that a man called Shanks had calculated the value of π to 707 places of decimals. Who Shanks was, why he should have performed this Gargantuan feat, and why he should have stopped, if not from exhaustion, at the 707th place, were questions that may have been asked but were seldom answered. The bald statement is still to be found in a number of recent books, but it is not often brought up to date by noting the interesting sequel, that round about 1944 a member of this Association, D. F. Ferguson, re-calculated πby a formula similar to but different from that used by Shanks, and discovered that Shanks had made a mistake and that his value was incorrect after the 527th place.

Front Matter

Back Matter

Page 3 of 3