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arXiv · 2103.09347

La Baguette Mathémagique

Julyan H. E. Cartwright
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Abstract

If you throw a needle or stick at random onto a floor ruled with parallel lines, such as the cracks between floorboards or tiles, from the proportion of times that the stick lands crossing a crack you can estimate $π$; can we get $e$ as well? Yes, we can. All of these aspects have been discussed before, but I haven't seen them discussed in this way: that one can estimate both $π$ and $e$ with the same Buffon's needle experiment.

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Julyan H. E. Cartwright. 2021-03-16. La Baguette Mathémagique. https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.09347

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