Calculate Pi

There is not yet a FixDecimal type module in Raku, and using FatRat all along would be too slow and would be coerced to Num when computing the square root anyway, so we'll use a custom definition of the square root for Int and FatRat, with a limitation to the number of decimals. We'll show all the intermediate results.

The trick to compute the square root of a rational n d {\displaystyle n \over d} up to a certain amount of decimals N is to write:

n d = n 10 2 N / d d 10 2 N / d = n 10 2 N / d 10 N {\displaystyle {\sqrt {\frac {n}{d}}}={\sqrt {\frac {n10^{2N}/d}{d10^{2N}/d}}}={\frac {\sqrt {n10^{2N}/d}}{10^{N}}}}

so that what we need is one square root of a big number that we'll truncate to its integer part. We'll use the method described in Integer roots to compute the square root of this big integer.

Notice that we don't get the exact number of decimals required : the last two decimals or so can be wrong. This is because we don't need a n {\displaystyle a_{n}} , but rather a n 2 {\displaystyle a_{n}^{2}} . Elevating to the square makes us lose a bit of precision. It could be compensated by choosing a slightly higher value of N (in a way that could be precisely calculated), but that would probably be overkill.

constant number-of-decimals = 100;

multi sqrt(Int $n) {
  (10**($n.chars div 2), { ($_ + $n div $_) div 2 } ... * == *).tail
}

multi sqrt(FatRat $r --> FatRat) {
  return FatRat.new:
    sqrt($r.numerator * 10**(number-of-decimals*2) div $r.denominator),
    10**number-of-decimals;
}

my FatRat ($a, $n) = 1.FatRat xx 2;
my FatRat $g = sqrt(1/2.FatRat);
my $z = .25;

for ^10 {
  given [ ($a + $g)/2, sqrt($a * $g) ] {
    $z -= (.[0] - $a)**2 * $n;
    $n += $n;
    ($a, $g) = @$_;
    say ($a ** 2 / $z).substr: 0, 2 + number-of-decimals;
  }
}

Output:

3.1876726427121086272019299705253692326510535718593692264876339862751228325281223301147286106601617972
3.1416802932976532939180704245600093827957194388154028326441894631956630010102553193888894275152646100
3.1415926538954464960029147588180434861088792372613115896511013576846530795030865017740975862898631567
3.1415926535897932384663606027066313217577024113424293564868460152384109486069277582680622007332762125
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971699491647266058346961259487480060953290058518515759317101932
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280468522286541140
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170668
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170665
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170664
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170663