The world is full of mysteries, from why anyone thought recreating emoji in real life was a good idea to what the heck is going on at Fushimi Inari Shrine. Another mystery is what all the digits of pi are. Since the number just goes on and on forever, it’s a mystery that will never — can never — be solved.
However, we have figured out a huge amount of pi — to trillions of digits, in fact! And you can even buy a book with the first one million digits in Japan thanks to the Dark Communications Group, which is not a group of mad mathematicians plotting to take over the world.
We hope.
The book pictured below is titled Pi to 1,000,000 Digits, as you probably already guessed. Originally published in 1996, the book was released by Ankoku Tsushin Dan, or the Dark Communication Group, which self-publishes the Pi book.
https://twitter.com/sssa_617/status/603771381906419713The book, which bears the recommended price of 314 yen (about US$2.50), apparently features 10,000 digits per page as well as the disclaimer that, while they’ve endeavored to get every single number correct, there may be mistakes. It provides a suggested method for using the book as a random number generator as well.
円周率「π」の本!!
— 北あかり (@monkey_as) August 16, 2014
1行100桁
1ページ10000桁
お値段¥314
値が間違ってても発行者は責任とりませんだって、でたらめじゃ(゚∀゚) pic.twitter.com/uXVGtUt36e
A simple FAQ section at the back also provides some information about the production of the unusual publication. According to it, the author developed an original program to derive the first million digits of pi in order to write the book. It’s also apparently not possible to copyright the digits of pi, which should be obvious, we suppose.
これですね。同じく暗黒通信団、同じく314円の、円周率100万桁です。中にはびっしり円周率が並んでいます。 pic.twitter.com/dbAD2yyjnE
— みこと@綾夢 (@Lati_neko) February 1, 2015
The Dark Communication Group has apparently also had some interesting communication with the Japanese National Library, including attempting to get a book wraparound alone included on the library’s shelves. Unfortunately, they got a rejection letter stating that the library would not accept books that consisted solely of wraparounds.
▼ The wraparound in question
暗黒通信団から『オビしかない本』が送られてきました。著者は「ザ・キカク」になってるけど誰だろう??笑 国会図書館はカバーだけでなく、オビも所蔵しないのはケシカランという話から具現化した物の様です。 pic.twitter.com/Tj7kpUDvpm
— ハマザキカク (@hamazakikaku) June 2, 2015
The group is quite charitable with their creations though. In fact, we can all download wrapping paper with pi as a PDF for free! We bet it would be great for any graduating mathematicians you may know.
暗黒通信団の本、いっぱいあるんだなあ((одо))) pic.twitter.com/fF91q0zUV3
— yanami reiko (@8823ppm) February 24, 2015
Pi isn’t the only number the Dark Communication Group cares about printing. They have also produced a memorization practice book for those seeming to get as many digits of pi into their brains as possible, plus books for e, used to find the natural logarithm of a number, and a list of 150,000 prime numbers.
暗黒通信団 とは pic.twitter.com/2mFCWSADgp
— 猫 (@h_east) January 2, 2015
In addition, the group has produced a number of other PDFs with everything from the square root of 2 to one million digits to the sine of 1 to one million digits. You can find those PDFs here, released under a creative commons license.
The books can be ordered online from their website or Amazon Japan, or bought at bookstores like Junkudo and Maruzen.
https://twitter.com/aj1n/status/604847254004854785In case you’re wondering, the current record for finding the largest number of digits of pi is over 13.3 trillion digits, though Wikipedia tells us that for most practical purposes only the first 40 or so digits are generally necessary. The same entry also reveals memorizing pi is a common challenge people undertake (which is also apparently the main use of the book), with 67,890 digits the largest number of memorized digits confirmed by Guinness World Records.
We’re not sure what the use of knowing that many digits of pi is, but it certainly is impressive!
Sources: Naver Matome, Jin115, Darkside Communication Group, Wikipedia (Pi)
Image: Twitter (@aj1n)
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