Math For December

My neat bit of math for december

Let sin(x) be some polynomial which may be factored as
sine factors
Since
sincmplx
which is never zero when x and y are real and y is not zero, and since

the only factors of sin(x) are those of the form

Furthermore, since at each of the points The derrivative of sin(x) is equal to plus or minus one, so we may conclude that each of these factors appears exactly once. In addition to this we know that appart from x=0, each factor has a corresponding factor of the form

so that the two may be combined in the form

We may conclude that we may write sin(x) as

From the product rule for derrivatives it can be shown that

The only other necessary constraint is that the limit of their product exists. These two constraints are satisfied when

We may then write

or alternately, by using instead of x,

Because we know that

we can say that

and that is how one may arrive at this particular infinite product for pi. I should note that it doesn't converge very fast. In fact, it converges as slowly as any inverse-square infinite sum for pi. It required, I believe, about ninety-thousand factors to get eight decimal places.


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Old Math Pages December, 1999