I came across www.correctpi.com in which an author claims that in his book he measures pi = 3.125 accurately. Unfortunately, the book seems to have made it from Sweden to the United Kingdom (where so far few copies seem to have been sold) and is not in the United States. Anyway, do you think that his argument that the true value of pi = 3.125 can possibly be valid?

Pure claptrap. Where do you find this stuff?!

There was an AP thread on pi that contained some sources on on the history of pi. There is no "pi-mystery" to be solved, as implied by the website. Mathematicians are quite satisfied with the value they have derived, as defined by a circle in the Euclidean plane. (If the circle is, say, the Earth's equator and you use a great-circle diameter as measured by a surface traveler, then the ratio of circumference to diameter is 2 !)

But don't you think somebody would have noticed by now if the value was off by over half a percent? Don't you realize how crucially modern engineering and science depend on the value of pi? I don't mean to be preachy, but a little more critical thinking might be useful here.

Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out. -- skeptical proverb

Professor: Are you balling me out? Of course, it appears that had the value of pi been wrong for so long, the proof of this fact would have made headlines. I thought that you would give a link to a proof of the value of pi = 3.1415926535........

Sorry, no offense meant. Since the claim you reported is so extraordinary, I never know if it's some kind of joke, a challenge to "find the fallacy", or just a dumb question. Can we agree to a non-agression pact?

The AP link I gave cites books on pi rather than Internet sites. If it's links you're after, there's Pi (from MathWorld) with many links of its own. Here is an interesting excerpt:

quote:

Pi crops up in all sorts of unexpected places in mathematics besides circles and spheres. For example, it occurs in the normalization of the normal distribution, in the distribution of primes, in the construction of numbers which are very close to integers (the Ramanujan constant), and in the probability that a pin dropped on a set of parallel lines intersects a line (Buffon's needle problem). Pi also appears as the average ratio of the actual length and the direct distance between source and mouth in a meandering river (Stølum 1996, Singh 1997).

There are many algebraic formulas for calculating pi (continued fractions, infinite sums, infinite products), some dating back to the 1600's. The most useful series are the ones that converge the fastest.

The favorite new algorithm for churning out digits of pi, discovered in 1995, is the BBP Formula.

As to the crank site you posted: I don't really know what his argument is, since you apparently have to buy his book first -- the .pdf is just a promo. Judging from his home page and the book's table of contents, it's jibberish. Unless it's a prank, the author is sadly delusional or even tragically psychotic. But isn't the net full of that?

Some people still work on classic geometry problems of antiquity, such as "squaring the circle", "trisecting the angle", and "doubling the cube", proved impossible centuries ago. Go figure.

It seems that at best the author gave his e-mail address. That will not help me, because I do not know what question to ask. So I posted the question of which I could think in this math forum. It would be helpful if the author or someone else would come to his defense.

About i^2= -1, pi=3,14…, e=2,71…
=============.
My question is :
Can "imaginary and transcendental quantities"
belong to a real particle?
1.
Take, for example, Dirac,s sea.
The particles in this sea are negative, virtual, imaginary.
2.
The Dirac,s sea is not warm place, but very cold one.
In this cold space there are own laws.
For example.
According to J. Charles law ( 1787),
when the temperature falls down on 1 degree
the volume decreases on 1/273. And when the
temperature reaches -273 degree the volume
disappears and particles become "flat figures ".
The " Charles law" was confirmed by other physicists:
Gay-Lussac, Planck, Nernst, Einstein .
These " flat figures " have the geometrical form of a circle,
as from all flat figures the circle has the most
optimal form: C/D=pi= 3,14.
This is one of condition of " imaginary" particles.
3.
Can these " imaginary" particles become "real" ?
Of course.
How?
To use Goudsmit - Uhlenbeck's impulse / spin (h = h/ 2pi).
And as result they acquire volume.
With volume they acquire also mass, charge, energy.
4.
Quantum theory says:
when electron interacts with vacuum, its physical parameters
become infinite. But such statement contradicts the
"Law of conservation and transformation energy".
And then we should understand and accept that when the
physical parameters of electron disappear (become infinite)
it become " flat figure ".
We don’t need to dream of "a method of renormalization".
5.
The " imaginary" particle is a "real " particle.
The numbers; i^2= -1, pi=3,14…, e=2,71…
belong to the " imaginary" particle.
6.
Mathematics is not written for mathematicians.
Mathematics is written for physics, for Nature.
The numbers do not exist only for itself.
The "real" numbers exist in connection with "real" particles.
And the "imaginary " numbers also exist in connection with
"imaginary " particles.
The "imaginary " particles are not hard, steel particles.
Their geometrical form can change.
This change is explained with Lobachevsky/ Bolyai geometry.
This change is explained with the Lorentz transformations.
==================..
Some quotations.
"A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room
looking for a black cat which isn't there"
/ Charles R. Darwin./
=================.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
they are not certain,
and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
/ Albert Einstein./
===========.