News / Bearpit
Mathematical graffiti in the Bearpit
Graffiti often gets a bad reputation, especially when it’s mindless tagging.
The latest graffiti in the Bearpit is a more cerebral work than most, however, with the famous mathematical constant pi written to almost 100 decimal places.
The number has been written on a side of a former toilet block in the Bearpit which has recently been repainted as part of the city council’s summer cleanup of the area.
is needed now More than ever
Bristol’s resident pi expert, Oliver Humpage, head of ICT at the Watershed who graduated with a mathematics masters degree from the University of Bristol, said that despite a few mistakes, the number “is accurate enough to calculate the width of the galaxy to the accuracy of a hydrogen atom”.
Here is Oliver explaining (and reciting) the significance of pi at an Ignite Bristol event on the SS Great Britain in 2011:
Read more: Crime falls by three quarters in the Bearpit since summer cleanup
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