Re: Pi Stuff

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

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At 01:15 PM 1/5/96 -0800, you wrote:
>Various amazed people on the Pi thread wrote:
>
> > But BTW, isn't it interesting, that news item from a few
> > weeks ago, on an algorithm for determining individual bits
> > in Pi, regardless of whether you've calculated all the
> > previous ones.  Only problem is, it only works in
> > hexadecimal (and, obviously, binary, etc, not decimal.

>A few quick comments.  The notion that one might be able to
>compute digits of Pi efficiently at any starting point in the
>number is not late-breaking news.  The Chudnovsky brothers
>developed a formula which permitted them to do this a number of
>years ago, and used it to compute Pi to several billion digits.

While I'm not an expert at this, I think you're misrepresented the Chudnovsky result.  They formulated an equation that allowed "you" to continue the calculation past "N" digits as long as you had the result that far.  As far as I know, they DID NOT generate any formula for the generation of isolated digits of pi, the more recent news. 

I'm signing this message after having turned off word-wrap in Eudora.  I'm told this my help my clearsigning process.  Could somebody verify this?

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