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A circle bounds a region of the plane called a disc. The circle has been known since before the beginning of recorded history. Natural circles are common, such as the full moon or a slice of round fruit. The circle is the basis for the wheel, which, with related inventions such as gears, makes much of modern
The number π (/ p aɪ /; spelled out as "pi") is a mathematical constant, approximately equal to 3.14159, that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.It appears in many formulae across mathematics and physics, and some of these formulae are commonly used for defining π, to avoid relying on the definition of the length of a curve.
The circumference of a circle is the distance around it, but if, as in many elementary treatments, distance is defined in terms of straight lines, this cannot be used as a definition. Under these circumstances, the circumference of a circle may be defined as the limit of the perimeters of inscribed regular polygons as the number of sides ...
The most famous of these problems, squaring the circle, otherwise known as the quadrature of the circle, involves constructing a square with the same area as a given circle using only straightedge and compass. Squaring the circle has been proved impossible, as it involves generating a transcendental number, that is, √ π.
Gauss's circle problem asks how many points there are inside this circle of the form (,) where and are both integers. Since the equation of this circle is given in Cartesian coordinates by x 2 + y 2 = r 2 {\displaystyle x^{2}+y^{2}=r^{2}} , the question is equivalently asking how many pairs of integers m and n there are such that
Trigonometry, in the form of a table of chord lengths in a circle, was probably used by Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria to obtain the value of π given in the Almagest (circa 150 CE). [ 68 ] Advances in the approximation of π (when the methods are known) were made by increasing the number of sides of the polygons used in the computation.
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Lengths of arcs of the circle, in degrees, and the integer parts of chord lengths, were expressed in a base 10 numeral system that used 21 of the letters of the Greek alphabet with the meanings given in the following table, and a symbol, "∠′ ", that means 1 / 2 and a raised circle " " that fills a blank space (effectively ...