[FOM] Wittgenstein's '770' in pi

[Timothy Y. Chow]

"Harold Teichman" <hteichman at comcast.net> wrote:
> No such statements (about decimal expansions) figure prominently in the 
> texts on number theory that I have seen.  Could someone refer me to some 
> actual literature in number theory (or any other part of mathematics) 
> that has a bearing on this question?

If we change "decimal expansion" to "binary expansion," then it is de 
rigueur to mention the Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe formula for pi.  See, for 
example:

http://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/20010.5.shtml

This is usually advertised as a method for computing the nth binary digit 
of pi without computing all the previous digits.

Tim