This article was taken from the August 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
This image is a representation of the first 100 billion digits of pi. "I was interested to see what I'd get by turning a number into a picture," says mathematician Jon Borwein, from the University of Newcastle in Australia, who collaborated with programmer Fran Aragon. "We wanted to prove, with the image, that the digits of pi are really random," explains Aragon. "If they weren't, the picture would have a structure or a repeating shape, like a circle, or some broccoli."
This image is equivalent to 10,000 photos from a ten-megapixel camera, and it can be explored in Gigapan. The technique doesn't only confirm established theories -- it can also provide insights: during the drawing of a supposedly random sequence called the "Stoneham number", Aragon noticed a regularly occurring shape within the figure. "We were able to show that the Stoneham number is not random in base 6," he explains. "We would never have known this without visualising it."
Going for a random walk
Borwein and Aragon drew the image using a classic tool called the "random walk" - a path described by the sequence of digits in a random number. The rules of the walk depend on the number's base: if the base is 4, the algorithm can draw in four different directions, as they do in this figure. For 1, you go right, 2 indicates up, 3 is to the left, 0 is down.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
