Pi is irrational

https://arbital.com/p/pi_is_irrational

by Patrick Stevens Jul 3 2016 updated Jul 21 2016

The number pi is famously not rational, in spite of joking attempts at legislation to fix its value at 3 or 22/7.


The number [49r ] is not rational.

Proof

For any fixed real number , and any Natural number , let where is the Factorial of , is the [-definite_integral], and is the [-sin_function].

Preparatory work

Exercise: . %%hidden(Show solution): We use [-integration_by_parts].

[todo: show this] %%

Now, so is an integer.

Also which by a simple calculation is . %%hidden(Show calculation): Expand the integrand and then integrate by parts repeatedly:

The first integral term is

The second integral term is which is which is

Therefore %%

Therefore, if and are integers, then so is inductively, because is an integer and is an integer.

But also as , because is in modulus at most and hence

For larger than , this expression is getting smaller with , and moreover it gets smaller faster and faster as increases; so its limit is . %%hidden(Formal treatment): We claim that as , for any .

Indeed, we have which, for , is less than . Therefore the ratio between successive terms is less than for sufficiently large , and so the sequence must shrink at least geometrically to . %%

Conclusion

Suppose (for contradiction) that is rational; then it is for some integers .

Now is an integer (indeed, it is ), and is certainly an integer, so by what we showed above, is an integer for all .

But as , so there is some for which for all ; hence for all sufficiently large , is . We already know that and , neither of which is ; so let be the first integer such that for all , and we can already note that .

Then whence or or .

Certainly because is the denominator of a fraction; and by whatever definition of we care to use. But also is not because then would be an integer such that for all , and that contradicts the definition of as the least such integer.

We have obtained the required contradiction; so it must be the case that is irrational.