Ingenuity came to play in these two studies that, each of them, tried unusual ways to estimate the value of particular mathematical constants. (Note that, if you consider only these two studies, you might leapingly assume that this kind of thing is attempted once every decade.)
Using a Shotgun
“A Ballistic Monte Carlo Approximation of π,” Vincent Dumoulin and Félix Thouin, arXiv 1404.1499v2, April 8, 2014. (Thanks to Marcus Sprenkel for bringing this to our attention.) The authors report:
“We compute a Monte Carlo approximation of πusing importance sampling with shots coming out of a Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun as the proposal distribution. An approximated value of 3.131 is obtained, corresponding to a 0.33% error on the exact value of π. To our knowledge, this represents the first attempt at estimating πusing such method, thus opening up new perspectives towards computing mathematical constants using everyday tools.”
Using Minecraft
“Approximating Mathematical Constants using Minecraft,” Molly Lynch, Michael Weselcouch, arXiv 2411.18464, 2024, (Thanks to Mason Porter for bringing this to our attention.) The authors report:
“In this article we will use Minecraft to experimentally approximate the values of four different mathematical constants. The mathematical constants that we will approximate are 2‾√,π, Euler’s number e, and Apéry’s constant ζ(3). We will begin each section with a brief history of the number being approximated and describe where it appears in mathematics. We then explain how we used Minecraft mechanics to approximate the constant. At the end of each section, we provide some ideas for how to apply our techniques to the approximation of other mathematical constants in Minecraft or elsewhere. This article is a proof of concept that Minecraft can be used in higher education. We should note that the goal of this article is not to have the most accurate approximations possible, the goal is to inspire people to have fun while learning about various mathematical topics. We hope you learn something new in this article and feel inspired to try some of these techniques on your own.”