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