The Joy of Pi by David Blatner

The Joy of Pi

by David Blatner

Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1997, ISBN 0713992174, illustrated title page, lightly illustrated two-toned patterns and illustrations throughout, hardcover, dust-jacket

Near Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, no inscriptions, dust-jacket shows minor edge and shelf wear with minor rubbing to edges and corners, minor creasing (see photographs)

“Few mathematical mysteries have captured the imagination as much as pi: the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.  For four thousand years we have puzzled over this transcendental number.  In The Joy of Pi David Blatner explores its extraordinary history, from Archimedes to Leonardo da Vinci, from Newton to the modern-day Chudnovsky brothers, currently calculating pi into billions with a homemade supercomputer.  Other contemporary pi eccentrics include Hideaki Tomoyori, who recently recited pi to 40,000 places from memory, taking seventeen hours and twenty-one minutes.
As well as stories of those obsessed with the number, The Joy of Pi includes pi-inspired cartoons, poems, limericks and jokes; devices to teach you how to memorize pi; and the calculation of pi to the first one million digits – enough to satisfy all but the most exacting of pi eccentrics.”.”