Thread: longer numbers?
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Old 08-27-2003, 03:24 PM   #11
welcor
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Location: Aarhus, Denmark, Europe
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200+ digits ? Why would ANYONE need numbers of that size ?
(to give an idea about just how absurd this is, consider the number of atoms in the universe is estimated at 1e79 (See for details.)

I remember back in high school we had a calculator program capable of 'unlimited length'* numbers. It could add, subtract and multiply, divide, calculate square root etc. . We used it to calculate pi to thousand decimals, to see if this high precision would allow for us to solve the circle/square problem (I don't remember the exact name, it's 15 years ago...) - of course the math program just showed us that no matter the accuracy, pi is still not expressable in decimal form. It also showed us that when you get past the first 10-12 digits, the rest is academic**.

Welcor

* limited by memory, which at the time was, I think, 64 or 128K.
** Academic = not worth it.
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