[Joe K]

Originally Posted by nkaminar

314 trillion digits of pi was just calculated on a single Dell PowerEdge R7725 server that ran constantly for nearly four months. See https://www.livescience.com/physics-...ely-irrational

For most engineering calculations only 4 decimal places are needed.

One of the entry level engineering course examples involved the "engineering effect" that "significant digits" has on the final outcome.

To demonstrate this, the Professor calculated some common engineering calculation (I think it volumetric compression in a cylinder) and instead of Pi used to calculate the area, he used "3." Surprisingly, it didn't make that much difference in the answer, actually less than the 3.14/3 fraction/percentage (4.06 percent) that starting with the incorrect value represented.

It became our task for that evening to identify why this was so. Which meant doing the calculation "in parallel" for each step and comparing the intermediate answers all the way down to the end.

Joe K