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Also found by ancient Chinese Zu Chongzhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zu_Chongzhi



If your post is intended to combat the tendency for westerners to constantly repeat stories about western contributions to science and culture and to minimize or ignore the contributions of other cultures then I'd agree but I think your post doesn't really get that across.

The article seems to be making the assertion that William Jones was the first person to use the Greek Letter "Pi" to represent Pi the transcendental number and the first to suggest Pi was unable to be "expressed in numbers."

So in that sense the claim is that Jones invented the association of "Pi" to Pi...the association of the Greek letter to the number itself.

The article really isn't talking about finding approximations for pi so neither Zu Chongzhi nor Archimedes or any other older mathematicians finding approximations are really relevant here. [0]

Frankly its not even a particularly interesting piece of history in my opinion. A curiosity but nothing more.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Antiquity


Fair enough, thanks for the references. My previous comment was merely intended to be anecdotal, not trying to invoke arguments :)




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