Take it to the limit one more time – a history of calculus IVb

I done fucked up! In the last post in this series I stated that Zu Chongzhi’s determination of the value of Pi was the most accurate until the sixteenth century and the determination of the German-Dutch mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen (1540–1610). This is complete rubbish! I wasn’t paying attention and did the equivalent of turning two pages at once in my source material. Mādhava of Sangamagrāma (c. 1340-c. 1425) the founder of the so-called Kerala School of astronomy and mathematics in south-west India, using a different method based on an infinite series determined Pi to eleven decimal places (3.14159265359) and a later value accurate to thirteen decimal place (3.1415926535898) is also attributed to him. The astronomical treatise Karanapaddhati, also out of Kerala and dated to the late fifteenth century gives values of Pi, using infinite series, accurate to seventeen decimal places (3.14159265358979324) and thirty-one decimal places (0.31415926535897932384626433832792). The author…

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