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by skirmish 604 days ago
By repeatedly throwing a needle on a striped pattern: [1]. Obviously, you will need an infinite number of throws for an infinitely precise measurement of pi.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffon%27s_needle_problem

1 comments

> you will need an infinite number of throws

It's worse than that: you also need an unambiguous way of determining whether the needle is overlapping a stripe.

That would affect only a few borderline trials and would average out with subsequent throws. It would be much more worrisome that the length of a needle or the width of a stripe is not infinitely precise, that would consistently affect all the trials.