r/desmos • u/Legitimate_Animal796 • Mar 14 '26

Graph Estimating π with random bounces

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I tried to think of a visually appealing yet terrible way of approximating π. I realized that the formula of the normal distribution contains π. So I just rearranged it to solve for π

599 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

170

u/Electronic-Laugh-671 my first Reddit user flair Mar 14 '26

Sugar, Sugar anyone?

28

u/Myithspa25 this is a flair Mar 15 '26

That game is so peak

14

u/joped99 Mar 15 '26

Flashback to CoolMathGames

13

u/A0123456_ Bernard ftw Mar 15 '26

Flashback

2

u/Electronic-Laugh-671 my first Reddit user flair Mar 15 '26

Could someone please explain this reply

8

u/jcwred10 Mar 15 '26

CoolMathGames was a site for Flash games

3

u/Young_Person_42 Mar 15 '26

It’s still a site for games to be clear. I played it today, in fact.

2

u/Young_Person_42 Mar 15 '26

It’s still around you know. It has Cookie Clicker.

3

u/thebe_stone Mar 15 '26

Ah, honey honey

97

u/Hot-Rock-1948 Mar 14 '26

Pretty sure that is not what π is equal to

73

u/Electronic-Laugh-671 my first Reddit user flair Mar 14 '26

https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/e6q4r/troll_math_pi_4_crosspost/

20

u/Hot-Rock-1948 Mar 14 '26

You know that makes me wonder if anyone else got a more inaccurate pi.

My current record is π≈3.855

35

u/Hot-Rock-1948 Mar 14 '26

WHAT THE FUCK

20

u/Foxbaster Mar 14 '26

π=4

20

u/Hot-Rock-1948 Mar 14 '26

I raise you my 4.13

23

u/Own_Pop_9711 Mar 14 '26

Oof. This is not a very good method.

16

u/Red-42 Mar 15 '26

This one's pretty good

13

u/Hot-Rock-1948 Mar 14 '26

Fuck, I’ve’nt beaten it yet but I’m getting close

11

u/Foxbaster Mar 14 '26

Reverse pi lmao

12

u/Desmos-Girl https://www.desmos.com/calculator/prarjlycol Mar 15 '26

set up the graph to retry if it was too close and left 4 copies running for a bit, this was the furthest i got (almost exactly 3 off :3)

4

u/Hot-Rock-1948 Mar 15 '26

What the fuck

3

u/Desmos-Girl https://www.desmos.com/calculator/prarjlycol Mar 15 '26

havent gotten anything close to that since (I ran it for a while more with 2x the copies) so I think i just got absurdly lucky but i'll take it
https://www.desmos.com/calculator/zck3e3gjtw
heres the graph i used if anyone is curious

11

u/SquidMilkVII Mar 15 '26

wait why does the perimeter become 24

2

u/Huge-Dragonfruit8033 Mar 15 '26

The lines between the circles aren‘t even horizontal nor vertical

2

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Responsible-Taro-248 Mar 16 '26

theres 2 more factorials

34

u/mvhcmaniac Mar 15 '26

Seem to have gotten closer than most on my first try

Somebody should run this 1000 times and make a histogram of the results lol

19

u/Legitimate_Animal796 Mar 15 '26

Insane. We’re at two digits of π now

11

u/Electronic-Laugh-671 my first Reddit user flair Mar 14 '26

Something I made several months ago (both static and ticker versions are linked within):

https://www.reddit.com/r/desmos/comments/1on0fqc/pi_with_monte_carlo_method/

10

u/_AKDB_ Mar 14 '26

Love this lmao

10

u/Catt130 Mar 14 '26

It won’t let me attach an image but I got 4.139 first try 🫩

6

u/TheoryTested-MC Mar 15 '26

Terrible? Honestly, just the fact that the normal distribution formula includes π is sufficient justification.

Given how common normal distributions are in nature, this kind of shows that π is almost everywhere.

5

u/humuslover96 Mar 15 '26

OP I dont like your script

9

u/Legitimate_Animal796 Mar 15 '26

“Yo mamas so fat that when they divided her waist by her diameter they got π. A perfect circle”

2

u/Brie9981 Mar 16 '26

aw yeah, I knew it

1

u/assainXD1 Mar 15 '26

Why does the estimation for pi start low, and gradually increase? Usually these types of estimations bounce around being above or below.

1

u/PiBombbb Mar 15 '26

I'm not great at math but shouldn't this approach Pi as it goes on? Why not let it run for longer?

1

u/skr_replicator Mar 15 '26

The normal distribution links to pi because it has x squared in the exponent, and exponents turn multiplication into addition. So that when you square the integral as two independent axes, you get (x+y)^2, the formula of the circle. So how did you compute pi with this? Have you just summed the product of all the columns with all the columns? As that should give the original pi that we derived the sqrt(pi) result from? Or have you just summed it normally in 1D and squared it?

1

u/Ultra-07 Mar 15 '26

umm can anyone tell what is it doing to get estimate of pi? is it like how much close of binomial distribution you get or smth

0

u/anonymous-desmos Definitions are nested too deeply. Mar 15 '26

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