Area of a circle Measurement of a Circle" (c. 260 BCE), compare the area enclosed by a circle to a right triangle whose base has the length of the circle's circumference and whose height equals the circle's radius. If the area of the circle is not equal to that of the triangle, then it must be either greater or less. We eliminate each of these by contradiction, leaving equality as the only possibility. We use regular polygons in the same way. Suppose that the area "C" enclosed by the circle is greater than the area "T" = ⁄"cr" of the triangle. Let "E" denote
Circumference in terms of these parameters. One such approximation, due to Euler (1773), for the canonical ellipse, is Some lower and upper bounds on the circumference of the canonical ellipse with formula_5 are Here the upper bound formula_9 is the circumference of a circumscribed concentric circle passing through the endpoints of the ellipse's major axis, and the lower bound formula_10 is the perimeter of an inscribed rhombus with vertices at the endpoints of the major and minor axes. The circumference of an ellipse can be expressed exactly in terms of the complete elliptic integral of the second kind. More precisely, we