Area of a circle as follows. Draw a perpendicular from the center to the midpoint of a side of the polygon; its length, "h", is less than the circle radius. Also, let each side of the polygon have length "s"; then the sum of the sides, "ns", is less than the circle circumference. The polygon area consists of "n" equal triangles with height "h" and base "s", thus equals ⁄"nhs". But since "h" < "r" and "ns" < "c", the polygon area must be less than the triangle area, ⁄"cr", a contradiction. Therefore, our supposition that "C" might be greater than "T" must be
Area of a circle good approximation to the circumference. To compute "u" and "U" for large "n", Archimedes derived the following doubling formulae: Starting from a hexagon, Archimedes doubled "n" four times to get a 96-gon, which gave him a good approximation to the circumference of the circle. In modern notation, we can reproduce his computation (and go further) as follows. For a unit circle, an inscribed hexagon has "u" = 6, and a circumscribed hexagon has "U" = 4. Doubling seven times yields The last entry of the table has ⁄ as one of its best rational approximations; i.e., there is no better