` article title== When did the title start displaying as π ? -    That's even worse.  Now I see a completely odd, non-Latin, non-Greek character.     ==Shanks==  Shanks' famous calculation of π is listed twice in the history corresponding to two different years, 1853 and 1874.  What's going on there?     *I think the 1853 date is wrong (according to other sources).     == BCE vs BC ==  Don't switch existing BCE usage to BC (or vice versa) without very good reason.  This is the same as the issue of American vs. British spelling for words, and the precedent (leave usage as it is originally written) is the same.  There are good arguments on either side (BCE is the academic/scholarly standard, even in British textbooks... and BC is more widely known, particularly outside North America) but until there is a Wikipedia standard on this issue (and there currently isn't) leave BCE/BC usage alone.  18:38, 2004 Aug 29 (UTC)  :Well here are some very very good reasons for switching all BCE/CE to BC/AD, but first let me deal with your opinions. This is not the same issue as AE vs. BE. There is no controversy in usage of language versions, just personal preference usually based on country of origin, so the precedent 'leave as originally written' doesn't apply here. In fact, because there's no Wiki standard, not very much does apply, apart from NPOV. BCE is the academic/scholarly standard... Is it? I don't think so. It's certainly making inroads, particularly in internet writing originating from America, but it's virtually unknown in the rest of the world and is certainly not a standard in British text books.  :So why change?   :1)Quite simply because use of BCE/CE is 'POV'. The de-facto global standard is BC/AD. A minority in the USA are trying to push their politically correct alternative (and having some success) and to use it in Wikipedia is to support this minority standpoint. Maybe BCE/CE will eventually become the de-facto global standard. If it does, then Wikipedia should adopt it, but in the mean time it use here is, in effect, supporting a political objective. Wikipedia should not promote this usage.  :2)Wikipedia should not use terminlogy that most of the world does not understand. An article on pi is relevant to everyone the world over. Readers should not have to ask the question '.. what's all this BCE stuff?'.    ::BCE is not American Political Correctness  it goes back several hundred years (the 15th century, I believe) and originated with Rabbinic scholars.  BCE/CE and BC/AD are both' POV, there's no escaping it.  Nonetheless, BCE/CE is the academic standard in the English-speaking world (try to find a history textbook  even a British one  published in the last decade that still uses BC/AD).  However  in Wikipedia articles we still accept Standard units of measurement (feet, miles, gallons'') despite the fact that the academic standard (even in the US) is to use Metric.  So like I wrote earlier, there are good arguments on either side.  Until there's a consensus (and the Pi article isn't the place to form it), it's best to leave the BCE/BC usage as the original author wrote it.  (And for the record, I personally use ISO date formats.)   04:28, 2004 Aug 31 (UTC)  I admit that I'm not North American, but also, I didn't know what the heck this BCE/CE stuff was about. Then I found it on WP, via List of acronyms. Now, just some google hit counting:  881 for ``before christian era``.  9,100 for ``before common era``. (1st hit is a good reference: www.radix.net/~dglenn/defs/ce.html)  81,300 for ``common era`` -``before common era``.  92,200 for ``common era``  269,000 for ``before christ``  278,000 for ``anno domini`` although maybe not needed, 3 further comments * the ``AD`` is probably underestimated, because so well known that explanation/spelling out is probably less frequent w.r.t. occurence * I also agree with ``leave as is`` if there's not a really undisputable reason for changing * ``(before) common era`` seems to me much more POV than ``before christ``. —     == Historical values ==  The first two historical values for pi given are both in bold, and so were (presumably) both world records. However, the first one is actually closer to pi than the second. What's going on there? NEWLI