Pi's value calculated to five trillion digits
Kondo praises computer that continued crunching numbers for three months 'without complaint'
Tokyo: A Japanese businessman using a home-built computer has taken calculations of the mathematical concept of "pi" to trillions of digits and won a world record for his labours.
Shigeru Kondo, a systems engineer in his 50s at a food company in the central Japanese prefecture of Nagano, in August calculated pi — the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter — to five trillion digits, almost doubling the accuracy of the previous world record.
Last week, the calculation was recognised by Guinness World Records with a certificate mailed to Kondo, who said he began the calculations simply as a hobby. "I really want to praise my computer, which calculated continuously for three months without complaint," Kondo told the Chunichi Shimbun daily.
He shared the honour with a US computer science student, Alexander Yee, who programmed the application software and liaised with Kondo by e-mail.
Using parts from local warehouses and online stores, Kondo assembled a desktop computer that featured two high-end Intel processers and 20 external hard-drives.
