Pi to the N'th degree

The 2,699,999,989,951th decimal of Pi is a 3.

This record breaking calculation wasn’t performed by some MIT guys with a supercomputer, but by a French computer scientist called Fabrice Bellard using a home PC running 24/7 for 104 days to produce a result which was then verified and converted from binary to base-10.

This sort of calculation is often used to check supercomputers are running ok and are going to give you accurate results when they perform tasks which are going to be far more critical. So it does have practical applications.

Below is a link to the story about this record breaker and how he beat the big guys.

http://www.physorg.com/news182
067503.html