True, 'spigot' is another name for this class of algorithms. Borwein and
Bailey, in their book "Mathematics by Experiment", say:
A spigot method for a numerical constant is one that can produce digits
one by one ("drop by drop").
so perhaps the term 'droplet' stems from this "image in our mind's eye."
@Alan
I may have misunderstood you. This is *not* the Borwein & Borwein approach
using their intricate `arctan` series (a BBP-like formula). That approach
generates 16 bits per loop, but strangely enough reconstructing the decimal
representation takes more time than computing the binary representation
itself.
@Steven
Do you think it was no fun to implement the droplet/spigot algorithm? Then
you may be completely wrong.
On Monday, March 9, 2015 at 1:32:40 PM UTC+1, David van Leeuwen wrote:
>
> Intriguing...
>
> searches seem to refer to this as a Spigot algorithm, but I find no
> references to droplet.
>
> ---david
>
>
