Buffon's Needle/Historical Note
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Historical Note on Buffon's Needle
Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon published this problem in his Histoire Naturelle in $1777$.
Pierre-Simon de Laplace extended the problem to a general rectangular grid, thus creating what is now sometimes referred to as the Buffon-Laplace Problem.
Augustus De Morgan reports that a pupil of his once performed a practical experiment using Buffon's Needle to calculate a value for $\pi$.
After $600$ trials, a value of $3.137$ was obtained.
Sources
- 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $3 \cdotp 14159 \, 26535 \, 89793 \, 23846 \, 26433 \, 83279 \, 50288 \, 41972 \ldots$
- 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $3 \cdotp 14159 \, 26535 \, 89793 \, 23846 \, 26433 \, 83279 \, 50288 \, 41971 \ldots$
- 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Buffon's needle problem
- 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Buffon's needle problem