ABSTRACT
Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greeks (and other early civilizations)
noticed that if you take any circle, no matter what its size, and divide
the circumference by the diameter, you will always get the same answer,
a number between 3 and 4 that we now refer to as pi. As a non-integer
of great importance, there was always interest in calculating the most ex-
act value of this constant-a task pursued initially for practical reasons,
and then later, when the first dozen or so decimal places had been nailed
down, primarily as an esoteric, academic challenge.1
