In CKDextHavn’s over-complicated explanation of the definition of pi it was neglected to mention that pi is not an exact number NOR an infinitum. Pi can be calculated with the simple expression of
which, on simple calculators, gives the answer
.
You’re referring to this Staff Report by CKDextHavn.
I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood Dex. Pi most certainly can not be calculated as 22/7. True, it’s not a bad estimate, since it’s easy to remember, but the first few digits of pi are: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950… and so forth. Close to 3.1428571428571428571428571428571…, but not the same number at all. This page’ll give you the first 10,000 digits of pi, and you can go here if you want to know more about the number. Bottom line: pi is irrational and, if you write it out, the digits do not repeat.
Actually, 22/7 isn’t even that good an approximation of pi. You’d be better off using 3.142.
pi = 3.14159… which, rounded to 3rd decimal place is 3.142
22/7 = 3.14285… which, rounded to 3rd decimal place is 3.143
Heck, it’s not that hard to memorize 3.14159. Use that instead of 22/7.
By the way, robot-penguin, where did you learn that? I think perhaps you misheard, unless the person you learned it from was the mistaken one.
Well, there’s always the argument that pi is exactly 3, because the Bible says so. There is a reference, I think somewhere in Kings, to a circular something or other that is 10 cubits wide and 30 cubits around.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, penguin, we’re glad to have you here… but you are misremembering. 22/7 is a estimate of pi that is usable for many purposes, but is not the same as pi, as already noted by zut and Irishman.
I’m working on yet another Staff Report on pi right now, and I find it quite amazing the number of reasonable and intelligent people who are absolutely convinced that [symbol]p[/symbol]=22/7 exactly. I blame the schools. Then again, I blame the schools for pretty much everything.
Did anyone else learn to approximate pi as 355/113? Just like any approximation, it’s not exact, but it is closer than 22/7.
22/7: 3.1428571428…
355/113: 3.1415929203…
Pi: 3.1415926535…
Also, here is where the Bible mentions the round molten sea that is 10 cubits wide and 30 around.
How would 355/113 be any easier than 3.141593? I guess you can save one digit of memory space, but it would take longer to use in most aspects, such as entering it into a calculator.
I personally like to use 3000[sup]1/10[/sup] + 75/82. I think that’s pretty easy.
What’s more, it’s actually possible that those measurements are exactly and precisely correct. The object in question is bowl-shaped, so if measurements are restricted to the surface of the bowl, then we’re in spherical geometry, and [symbol]p[/symbol] is less than the Euclidian value. It is possible for a circle in spherical geometry to have diameter of exactly 10 cubits and circumference of exactly 30 cubits.
Hmmm…You know, Oswald was in a school book depository.
I do remember hearing somewhere in grade school that 22/7 was an approximate, but I always found it easier to just memorize 3.14 (way back in grade school, 3 sig digits was ample). Later I just increased that to 3.14159. For most calculations, I could always use the pi button on the calculator, anyway. 
To answer another aspect of the OP, there is no such thing as an “inexact” number when one is talking about reals. There are numbers which have no finite decimal expansion, but they’re still “exact” (I’m not sure that that’s an actual mathematical term–it’s not listed at mathworld, at least. Dex?).
I don’t disagree, ultrafilter, there’s technically no such thing as an “exact” number vs an “inexact” number. But I thought I knew what the OP meant, sort of, using common English rather than mathematics as the language of communication.
Thus, 3.14159 is an certainly an “exact” number – it is different from 3.141592 or 3.14158, for instance. But it is not “exactly” pi. That is, pi is not “exact” in the sense that pi is an irrational, so that you can never write down all of its decimals, hence whenever you stop, you will have an “inexact” approximation.
There is another possible sense of “inexact.” The Real Numbers are, after all, a theoretical construct. Try though you will, you cannot construct a line that is “exactly” 1 cm long. Measurement is all inexact or approximate, having a margin of error. Thus, the exact/inexact can be used to distinguish between the real world and the math-theoretic world.
If inside a circle a line,
Hits the center and goes spine-to-spine,
If the line’s length is d,
The circumference will be:
d x 3.14159
I didn’t write this, and I can’t remember where I read it, but it’s nifty, eh?
Now I – even I – would celebrate
In rhymes inept the great
Immortal Syracusan rivaled nevermore,
Who by his wondrous lore,
Untold us before,
Made the way straight
How to circles mensurate.
– Edouard Prevost
Am I the only one who just finds it easiest to approximate it as 3.14159265358979323846?
A simpler mnemnonic, by the way, is “May I have a large container of coffee?”. It’s fortunate for the mnemonicizers that it happens to take a while for a zero to show up.
I say, why approximate? Just leave your answer in terms of pi. For crying out loud, we’re not engineers.
Pardon me…but some of us are engineers.
Well, geez, if you’re an engineer, then pi = 3 should be good enough for you, no?
What’s worse, I notice that both John W. Kennedy’s mnemonic and Chronos’s mnemonic round the wrong way. Unless Chronos counts the question mark. 
I’m sorry, I don’t follow you. Are we talking about a circle that also happens to lie on the surface of a sphere in a three-dimensional Euclidian space? Because if we are it seems to me it would have to also lie in some plane in that space and conform to the other requirement of a circle, that of having all its points equidistant from its center. So its circumference would still have to be pi times its diameter, not exactly three times its diameter. There’s no way that I know of to deform a circle as defined above in Euclidian or any other space so that the ratio of its circumference to its diameter conforms to the Biblical passage you cite.
I admit that yours is a more sophisticated argument, if only on the surface, than the more common one that the Bible writers were citing measurements of the outside diameter of a thick wall and its inside circumference or suchlike. But the bottom line is that the Christian Bible is not a mathematics text; the value of pi or its deriviation was unknown to its authors; they apparently had no other earthly or divine source for the correct information; and so 3 was close enough to pi for them.
I suppose I could be wrong as I never really got into non-Euclidian geometries, but for now I’d have to bet that I’m not wrong.