Monthly Archives: October 2010

Neil Sets a Math World Record (?!!)


To celebrate his 13th birthday, Neil Bickford (yes, that Neil) appears to have set the world record for computed terms of pi as a continued fraction, with 450 million terms computed–extending the old record of 180 million recorded by Hans Havermann.

See Neil’s blog for the whole story–including a lucid explanation of what a continued fraction is in the first place.

Neil worked for months on the custom C# program to do the computation, with additional weeks of work to prove the answer correct. A big thanks also goes to Bill Gosper who advised him throughout the project and has been a real gift as Neil’s friend and math tutor.

Dark Horse Gets Digital Comics Right

Someone actually gets this whole “Digital Comics” thing.

What a concept: a pricing and bundling model for digital comic book content that actually makes sense, combined with stories you’d actually want to read instead of ragbags and castoffs. And it’s from an independent publisher that clearly cares about comics, creators, and bringing great stories to fans. Well done, Dark Horse… Again!