There is an intense international competition that may have passed you by: the struggle to compute ever more accurately the value of pi. Pi is a mathematical constant, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter; it is a concept that arises in many branches of applied mathematics and in physics. The computation presents a challenge because pi cannot be exactly represented by a simple ratio and, when written out as a number, it carries on for an indefinitely long chain of digits ( beginning "3.14159265..."); the chain has no pattern and no repetitions.

The challenge has been met by scientists using supercomputers. Here is how the competition has gone in recent years:

2016: Peter Trueb (Switzerland) calculated pi to 22.4 trillion digits.

2019: Emma Haruka Iwao (US) used infrastructure powered by Google Cloud to calculate pi to 31.4 trillion digits.

2020: Timothy Mullican (US) calculated pi to 50 trillion digits

2021: Thomas Keller and Heiko Rölke (Switzerland) calculated pi to 62.8 trillion digits

Advances in computer technology have speeded the process up. So, while the 2020 attempt trundled along for 303 days, the 2021 record was achieved in just 108 days and nine hours

The greater the number of digits, the greater the accuracy of the estimate. But in engineering and other practical applications a mere dozen or so digits is considered accurate enough.

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