Steven D'Aprano wrote:
under Euclidean geometry, there was a time when people didn't know whether or not the ratio of circumference to radius was or wasn't a constant, and proving that it is a constant is non-trivial.
I'm not sure that the construction you mentioned proves that either, because it relies on the same assumptions about scaling of polygons that one makes about circles in Euclidean geometry. Seems to me the significance of it is not that it proves anything about the constness of pi, but that it provides a way of *calculating* pi to any desired accuracy. Before that, people had to rely on measurements of physical circles to come up with estimates for the value of pi. -- Greg -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
