posted on 2025-05-08, 15:03authored byJ. M. Borwein, P. B. Borwein
Five of the following twelve series approximations are exact. The remaining seven are not identities but are approximations that are correct to at least 30 digits. One in fact is correct to over 18,000 digits and another to in excess of a billion digits. The reader is invited to separate the true from the bogus. (For answers see the end of the introduction.) Most of these series are easily amenable to high precision calculation in one's favorite high precision environment, such as Maple or MACSYMA, and provide examples of "caveat computat." Things are not always as they appear.