The code in this repository estimates the value of π by a Monte Carlo process described below.
We will use it as an example to measure, and later improve, the performance of Python code.
You can run the code with python calc_pi.py.
There are some options you can customise. See the help message
(python calc_pi.py --help) or look at the code
to see what those are.
In this approach, π is approximated in 3 steps:
- sampling n random points inside a square with side length 1,
- counting the number of those points that fall inside a circle,
- and multiplying that by 4/n
(Why this works is not particularly important for our purposes, but you may find it interesting to figure it out for yourself)