Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 40
 `It seems like such a simple problem: draw a square that covers the same area as a circle ..' January 2, 2010
J. Cameron-Smith (ACT, Australia)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
'.. using nothing but a straightedge and a compass.'
In this book, David Blatner explores the history of Pi: who has tried to calculate it, and how. This book includes early estimates of the value of pi and the modern quest to find more digits of pi by using computers. The book even includes the first one million digits of pi.
Way back in the last century, I became acquainted with pi. After I left school, I never really needed to think about the value of it beyond the first few decimal places. I can understand the quest to find a pattern and the desire to stress test computers by calculating pi to 51.5 billion places (that was back in 1997). I can learn, and the world has certainly benefitted, from the obsessions of others.
This quirky little book is full of facts about pi, and also provides other sources for those who want to know more. For me this was an interesting and fun read. I think it would be fascinating to many young people learning about the enigma of pi.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
 about 1/3 useful and 1/3 interesting April 7, 2009
Michael Allison (Layton, UT United States)
The Joy of Pi is an interesting pamphlet in book form. Blatner has taken a number of cool facts and anecdotes and created a book around it. That and A LOT of filler graphics. Besides the book's small physical format, Blatner gives us about as much information as we would expect in a really good web site.
It is really a good chronology of PI over the millenia. I bought this used for a small price. If you can get it cheap it is fun to read. If you are looking for more serious background on PI, try Beckmann.
The Joy of Pi January 13, 2009
Nino Brown (Wisconsin)
Everyone knows a little something about pi. It has something to do with circles. It's about 3.14. It goes on forever. This book adds a bit to those scraps of knowledge, providing a short history and a number of factoids. (And an estimate of pi to, I believe, 100,000 decimal places.) Quick, fun reading for those who find dabbling in mathematics fun. Not, however, a rigorous study of any facet of pi.
 This is no Joy November 23, 2008
Alfonso (Miami, Florida USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I expected a fanciful, light-hearted assessment of the history, development, and understanding of pi. This book is none of those things. There are myriad books on the topic that are better than this. The typeface and its distracting watermarks and background graphics are annoying. Attemps to deal with historical perspective are amateurish. On page 29, Blatner says, "[In]...the Dark Ages...following the breakdown of the Roman Empire and the rise in power of early Christianity...budding scientific interest in Europe...was effectively quelled by religious intolerance..." This statement is historically inaccurate and appears solely to reflect the author's uninformed religious intolerance.
Not only do "zero" modern historians refer to the middle ages as "dark," but the author himself entitles the chapter "A Millenium of Progress!" David, is it "dark" or is it "progressive?" Please fish or cut bait. Further, the chapter continues to describe how progress was made through dialogue among the different relious and ethnic groups of the era. Not only is the history flawed, but the statements are self-contradictory. Poorly done and not at all funny.
 Fascinating and fun to read May 5, 2008
Dennis Littrell (SoCal)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Okay, what do you get when you measure the circumference of a jack o lantern?
Pumpkin pi(e).
This is just one of the many little pleasantries that David Blatner has for readers in this most attractive little gem of an exploration of 3.14159.... There's also some pi poetry, some of which is not half bad. There are pi mnemonic devices, words strung out in prose or rhyme with the length of the individual letters to remind one of the string of pi digits. For example, "How I wish I could calculate pi." Or, "Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling/In mystic force and magic spelling...." In the same chapter, "Memorizing Pi" Blatner recalls some of the great mnemonic exploits of pi-dom, culminating in the incredible feat of one "Hiroyki Goto, who in February 1995 spent just over nine hours reciting 42,00 digits of pi from memory." (p. 111)
One of the questions I always had about pi was, Are the digits random? The number is irrational and transcendent so apparently the numbers never repeat. To me that always sounded like something close to a definition of a random sequence. Here I learned that in the first million digits, there are 99,959 zeros, 99,758, ones, 100,026 twos, 100,229 threes, 100,230 fours, 100,359 fives, 99,548 sixes, 99,800 sevens, 99,985 eights, and 100,106 nines. I would consider that distribution indistinguishable from random. Incidentally the first one million digits are printed in the book, albeit in such small type that you'll need a magnifying glass to make out the numbers.
But could the seeming randomness of the digits change as more and more places are calculated? Apparently not since "now, at over 51 billion digits on record, it appears that there's no statistically relevant difference..." between any of the numbers. (p. 73)
Blatner has a chapter on "The Circle Squarers." These guys are still hard at work trying to square the circle, something I have been told that not even God can do. Some of the tries are very amusing. People who work at trying to square the circle may be compared with those who work on building a perpetual motion machine.
Also interesting is how the present value of pi was arrived at over the centuries and the various ways people tried to get it as exact as possible. In the chapter on "The History of Pi," Blatner recalls the "earliest known record of the ratio" which "was written by an Egyptian scribe named Ahmes around 1650 BCE." He reckoned that pi equaled 256/81 or 3.16049. Blatner reports that the Romans used three and an eighth as close enough even though they knew three and a seventh was more accurate, simply because three and an eighth was easier to work with. (p. 20)
The book is filled with art work sometimes superimposed over the relentless march of the digits of pi in something like one-point type. There are many sidebars with interesting tidbits about pi and quotes from famous mathematicians. The book is fun to read and would make a nice little gift for the budding mathematician in your family or CIRCLE of friends.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 40
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