A Man Wasted His Life On Pi

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A mathematician from the 1800's named William Shanks spent the greater part of his life working out the value of pi to 707th decimal place in 1873.  More than 60 years after his death, mathematician DF Ferguson, used a mechanical calculator and pointed out that Shanks got the last 180 of these decimal places wrong. In 1958 an IBM computer did in 40 seconds what Shanks had done in a lifetime. The millionth digit of pi was found in 1973 and the billionth by 1995. So he quite literally wasted his life on Pi. Imagine him hearing his achievement in life was right, up until the 527th digit only to get it wrong at the 528th and so on. At least he can say he lived up to his 70's in the 1800's. 

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