Perimeter of an Ellipse

On the Ellipse page we looked at the definition and some of the simple properties of the ellipse, but here we look at how to more accurately calculate its perimeter.

Perimeter Rather strangely, the perimeter of an ellipse is very difficult to calculate! There are many formulas, here are a few interesting ones:

Approximation 1

This approximation will be within about 5% of the true value, so long as a is not more than 3 times longer than b (in other words, the ellipse is not too "squashed"):

Approximation 2

The famous Indian mathematician Ramanujan came up with this better approximation:

Infinite Series 1

This in an exact formula, but it requires an "infinite series" of calculations to be exact, so in practice you still only get an approximation.
Firstly you must calculate e (the "eccentricity", not Euler's number "e"):

Then use this "infinite sum" formula:

Which may look complicated, but expands like this:

The terms continue on infinitely, and unfortunately you must calculate a lot of terms to get a reasonably close answer.

Infinite Series 2

But my favorite exact formula (because it gives a very close answer after only a few terms) is as follows:
Firstly you must calculate "h":

Then use this "infinite sum" formula:

(Note: the is the Binomial Coefficient with half-integer factorials ... wow!)

It may look a bit scary, but it expands to this series of calculations:

The more terms you calculate, the more accurate it becomes (the next term is 25h⁴/16384, which is getting quite small, and the next is 49h⁵/65536, then 441h⁶/1048576)

Comparing