In the olden Greek days, the way to go was cut up a circle into shapes that had more and more shallow angles, and infer under and upper boundaries for the value of π from those.
Newton introduced calculus. He found a way to express the value of π as a sum of terms that rapidly converge to very small values.
This turned out to be a way more efficient method of calculating the value, in terms of human brain power required.
tl;dr:
In the olden Greek days, the way to go was cut up a circle into shapes that had more and more shallow angles, and infer under and upper boundaries for the value of π from those.
Newton introduced calculus. He found a way to express the value of π as a sum of terms that rapidly converge to very small values.
This turned out to be a way more efficient method of calculating the value, in terms of human brain power required.
Great. Now I want pizza.
Someone else did a great video on this. 3Blue1brown? I can’t find the video :(.
it was actually Aryabhata, who discovered an approximation of pi, 62832/20000 = 3.1416.
https://i.imgur.com/Mjh01k0.jpg