Computation time for newcommer

[Joza]

Hi guys, new here!

So I'm trying to compute the value of pi using a series with a billion terms
(n):

for i=1:1:n
        
        x(i) = ( (-1)^(i + 1) ) / ( (2*i) - 1 );

end

% Sum all the values in the vector x

value = 4*sum(x)


When I run this however, nothing happens ... I just get a blinking prompt
and have to CTRL+C to get back to normal.

I'm running on a 1.3GHz 64-bit machine with 4GB RAM. I'm fairly new to
numerical computation, but why is this happening? Is the number of terms too
large for my machine? A million terms computes in about 30 or so seconds?



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