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.

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