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The Joy of Pi (Paperback)

~ (Author) "It's impossible to know when the first person observed that as a circle got larger, its diameter and circumference grew in constant proportion to each..." (more)
Key Phrases: circle squarers, Augustus De Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, Peter Borwein (more...)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
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Price: $10.08 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
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  Hardcover, November 30, 1997 -- $24.00 $1.07
  Paperback, August 31, 1999 $10.08 $2.98 $0.01
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Frequently Bought Together

The Joy of Pi + Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea + An Imaginary Tale: The Story of "i" [the square root of minus one]
Price For All Three: $32.04

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  • This item: The Joy of Pi by David Blatner

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  • Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife

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  • An Imaginary Tale: The Story of "i" [the square root of minus one] by Paul J. Nahin

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

No number has captured the attention and imaginations of people throughout the ages as much as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. With incisive historical insight and a refreshing sense of humor, David Blatner explores the many facets of pi and humankind's fascination with it-from the ancient Egyptians and Archimedes to Leonardo da Vinci and the modern-day Chudnovsky brothers, who have calculated pi to billions of digits with a homemade supercomputer. New in paperback.


About the Author

David Blatner is the author of The Joy of p, as well as eight books on topics such as digital imaging and virtual reality. More than 500,000 copies of his books are in print in twelve languages. He has spent hundreds of hours flying between Asia, Europe, and North America. He and his wife and son live in Seattle, Washington.

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David Blatner
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
It's impossible to know when the first person observed that as a circle got larger, its diameter and circumference grew in constant proportion to each other. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
circle squarers
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Augustus De Morgan, Budget of Paradoxes, Peter Borwein, William Shanks, Rhind Papyrus, Tsu Ch'ung-chih, William Jones, Ferdinand von Lindemann, Great Creator, John Wallis, Martin Gardner, Middle Ages, New York, Willebrod Snell
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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This book cites 11 books:
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The Joy of Pi
61% buy the item featured on this page:
The Joy of Pi 4.0 out of 5 stars (39)
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"e": The Story of a Number (Princeton Science Library) 4.4 out of 5 stars (58)
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Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
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Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea 3.9 out of 5 stars (142)
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An Imaginary Tale: The Story of "i" [the square root of minus one]
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An Imaginary Tale: The Story of "i" [the square root of minus one] 3.9 out of 5 stars (51)
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Customer Reviews

39 Reviews
5 star:
 (19)
4 star:
 (8)
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (39 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars a fun little book on a fun little number, May 20, 2000
By "houndzoflove" (Williamstown, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
I just received this book yesterday for winning a mathematics award at my high school. It's an interesting little book about this number that has captivated people for centuries. There's nothing new here - it's essentially a compilation of all the pi anecdotes and proof sketches that the author could find.

But it's a fun little book. Scattered throughout the book in really small print are the first million digits of Pi. The text is broken by many little sidebars and quotes, and there are formulas to calculate Pi throughout. If you have computer software that will allow you to calculate these series to at least 100 decimal places or so, see how fast the series converge.

One of the great themes in Pi calculation is finding series that converge faster and faster. Some series for Pi are, of course, quite elementary: 4(1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - ...) comes to mind, but this takes forever to converge. Then there are the "mystical" formulas - the ones where I have no idea how they equal Pi, but they do. For example, this formula, from the Chudnovsky brothers on p. 71: 1/Pi = 12 * (the sum on n = 0 to infinity) (-1)^n * (6n)!/((n!)^3*(3n!)) * (13591409+545140134n)/(640320^(3n+3/2)) which looks much more formidable, but gives 14 decimal places per term. This mystical aspect of Pi has attracted many geniuses over the centuries (including Ramanujan - there's a sidebar about him), and it isn't lost on Blatner.

Buy this book. You don't have to read it cover to cover - in fact, it's probably better to just dip in at random points here and there and see what you find.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars FUN! But in need of a good editor and designer..., February 15, 2003
By the_emperor_of_ice_cream (Ft Washington, Pa United States) - See all my reviews
There is a lot of very interesting information presented in David Blatner's The Joy of Pi, but it is well hidden behind a precipitous writing style and the worst graphics and design work ever presented in a general science book. But then why four stars?

Well, this one little tidbit alone was worth the price of admission: "The height of an elephant (from foot to shoulder) equals 2 x Pi x the diameter of the elephants foot". This is just one example of how Blatner attempts to show his audience how intrinsic and real and relevant Pi is to the everyday world. And he does it with a type of bombastic style and confident fun oftentimes not seen in general science books.

Well, at least it is fun for the first seventy-five pages or so. In the final chapters of the book, Blatner falls into a twenty-plus page flame of cyclometers (i.e. mathematical diletantes who are still trying to square the circle -- if you don't know what this means, then you really need to read the book!). His diatribe includes more than a dozen call-out boxes, 15 quotes, and various other assorted and sundry techniques for trying to make cyclometers look ridiculous (I don't believe that cyclometers will be successful, but it's their kind of energy and passion that put the human race in space).

Net/net:
1) Wealth of interesting facts about Pi
2) Design and formatting of text and graphics couldn't be worse
3) Questionable value to the last chapters which include a 20+ page flame on cyclometers
4) Three hour read to learning all the general enthusiast needs to know about Pi

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Pi 101: A fascinating survey of a mathematical enigma, January 16, 1998
By P. Mann (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
This review is from: The Joy of Pi (Hardcover)
Probably no number has so fascinated mathematicians and non-mathematicians as much as pi, that enigmatic and unnending number that begins 3.14159265. Pi is simple to define: it is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter. Beyond that simple definition lies much that is fascinating, as much for the behavior of those who have studied pi as for the number itself.

David Blatner's "The Joy of Pi" presents many anecdotes about pi and its history, and these stories span from the inchoate stages of geometry to the recent, computer-assisted explorations (indeed, running through the book is a one-million-digit expansion of pi). For the serious mathematician, "The Joy of Pi" probably contains little new and is too brief in the topics it does cover. But Blatner's apparent aim is not to produce a weighty intellectual tome. Instead, Blatner has written what might aptly be called "Pi 101." As a brief survey of one of the more fascinating mathematical enigmae, "The Joy of Pi" succeeds swimmingly.

When Stephen King, John Grisham, or Patricia Cornwell writes a new book, the audience is pre-sold. With a book about mathematics, however, the opposite is probably true. With math phobia (or innumeracy, as another author calls it) all too common, far too many people will pass up this breezy book for fear of being in over their heads or being bored to the point of tears. Anyone with such a fear should do his or her best to overcome it long enough to pick up "The Joy of Pi." The result might very well be a brief glimpse at the beauty and mystery of mathematics--and some of the more interesting and amusing pieces of its history (such as the misguided attempt to legislate pi!).

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars about 1/3 useful and 1/3 interesting
The Joy of Pi is an interesting pamphlet in book form. Blatner has taken a number of cool facts and anecdotes and created a book around it. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Michael Allison

3.0 out of 5 stars The Joy of Pi
Everyone knows a little something about pi. It has something to do with circles. It's about 3.14. It goes on forever. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Nino Brown

1.0 out of 5 stars This is no Joy
I expected a fanciful, light-hearted assessment of the history, development, and understanding of pi. This book is none of those things. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Alfonso

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and fun to read
Okay, what do you get when you measure the circumference of a jack o lantern?

Pumpkin pi(e). Read more
Published 18 months ago by Dennis Littrell

3.0 out of 5 stars A good beginning, but only a beginning
When you begin to read a book that's about six inches by six inches square and 120 pages, you can't expect a masterwork. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Nyghtewynd

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is cool!
This book was fascinating, and I learned alot on pi day.
On march 14 (Pi day) I had memorized 50 digits, and wowed my classmates. Read more
Published on March 13, 2007

1.0 out of 5 stars What nonsensical packaging
The Joy of Pi is a little book. It is little in that it is printed in a small format. It is also little in that it stretches to fill 144 of these little pages. Read more
Published on January 22, 2007 by Naor Wallach

5.0 out of 5 stars History of a number is a history of mathematical thought
This is a delightful little book covering the history of pi, the most famous number in mathematics. Unlike some other books, the advances made in East Asia throughout history are... Read more
Published on May 11, 2006 by Charles Ashbacher

5.0 out of 5 stars Great!
This is a delightful little book about everyone's favorite number (sorry "e"). Blatner explains the history of pi, attempts throughout the ages to compute pi to hundreds (and... Read more
Published on March 5, 2006 by Michael F. McPartlan

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Interesting!
I truly enjoyed every page of this book. It was very informative and had interesting facts throughout. I used some of the trivia with my students on Pi Day!
Published on March 17, 2005 by Melissa R. White

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