DROP'PI'- WHEN A NEEDLE’S QUIRKY FALL CRACKED THE CODE OF π
“Buffoon? Or Buffon?” That’s what I wondered the first time I heard someone mention Buffon’s Needle, an experiment that, strangely enough, had something to do with finding π. I always thought π belonged to circles — locked away in geometry class alongside formulas we memorized and quickly forgot. But then I stumbled across something strange. A needle. Some parallel lines. And a probability experiment from the 1700s. A French mathematician named Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) actually figured out a way to extract π from pure chance . No circles. No radius. Just a stick, a floor, and a whole lot of randomness. What started as a bizarre idea ended up becoming one of the earliest examples of how randomness can reveal deep truths — and how π is everywhere , even where you least expect it. π ONEERS OF PI "The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search the chance of success is zero" Philip Morrison Nearly 4000 years in...
