Jay Bern, age 13, of Glendale, Wisconsin, for his question:

What is the most accurate version of Pi?

Coping with circles is full of problems. You cannot always please everybody by slicing a simple pie. But this round problem is nothing compared to the analysis of a circle's radius and circumference, diameter and area. Mathematicians of ancient China used the number three in some of this figuring. They figured the area of a circle as three times the square of its radius. The Egyptians and later the Greeks were more exact. They knew that the key figure was somewhat larger than b

three. The special figure with three whole numbers plus a partial number was named with the Greek letter Pi.

Pi is given a workable value of 3.14. But this is not perfect. Some mathematicians use more precise values of 3.1416 or 3.14159. But even these values are not perfect, An English mathematician worked out the value of Pi to 707 decimals but even this was not perfect. The exact value, of course, is impossible. But the record is held by an electronic computer that worked out the value of the impossible figure to 10,000 decimal places.