The Pi Trivia Game

by Eve Andersson

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Finally this is your chance to pay tribute to the magnificent transcendental number that we have all grown to love! Here are 25 questions (given to you 5 at a time), picked randomly from my pi question database. Get ready for the thrill of your lifetime, the ultimate challenge, The Pi Trivia Game!

1. Who, in 1882, proved the transcendence of pi?
Werner Heisenberg
Mark Dettinger
Richard Feynman
Abraham Lincoln
Ferdinand Lindemann

2. Pi is transcendental. What does it mean for a number to be transcendental?
It is equal to the ratio of two integers.
It cannot be expressed as the solution of any polynomial with integer coefficients.
It is Ralph Waldo Emerson's favorite number.
Its square root is equal to -1.
Its decimal expansion is infinite in length.

3. A famous book contains the following paragraph, implying that pi=3:

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it about.

What book does this come from?

Homer's Odyssey
Ulysses by James Joyce
The Bible
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

4. If you pick any two integers at random, what is that probability that they will be relatively prime? ("relatively prime" means that the two numbers share no divisors except 1)
pi/2
pi/3
1/pi
6/(pi^2)
pi^2/9

5. What rapidly converging formula for calculation of pi was found by Machin in 1706?
pi/4 = 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ...
pi/4 = 4 * arctan (1/5) - arctan (1/239)
e^(i*pi) = -1
pi = 3 (close enough)
pi = 4 * arctan 1
eve@eveandersson.com