The practice of problem posing is as important to develop as problem solving. The resulting explorations can be mathematically rich.
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Nicholas H. Wasserman and Itar N. Arkan
The circle, so simple and yet complex, has fascinated mathematicians since the earliest civilizations. Archimedes, a well–known Greek mathematician born in 287 BCE, began to unravel part of the mystery involving π by applying iteration to the circle. Building on Euclid's postulates and theorems, Archimedes used iterations of inscribed and circumscribed regular polygons to find upper and lower bounds for the value of π. These bounds are close approximations of the value of π, and one is still used today: 22/7 differs from π only in the third place to the right of the decimal (see fig. 1).
