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111 Years Ago, Indiana Almost Legislated Pi
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "On February 5, 1897, 111 years ago today, the Indiana legislature very nearly passed a bill 'introducing a new mathematical truth,' that would have erroneously established pi as the ratio 'five-fourths to four' or 3.2. The story explaining the rationale behind the bill and how they were prevented from legislating it when a real mathematician intervened is quite interesting, because the man who discovered the 'new mathematical truth' wanted to charge royalties, which could have made pi the first form of irrational property."
Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom?
Take what ye can. Give nothing back!
Then again, maybe I'll patent 22/7 as a good way to approximate pi. I heard that intellectual property is all the rage nowadays.
I found it more amusing that the text of the bill mentioned previous submissions for trisection of the angle and whatnot as having been accepted by a publication. That "American Mathematics Monthly" or whatnot is who really has egg on its face.
A mathematical proof that politicians are almost always full of crap second and themselves first
It's not called hump day for nothing, you know.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Introduced by Record
IN THE SENATE
Read first time and referred to
committee on Temperance, February 11th, 1897
Reported favorable February 12th, 1897
Read second time and indefinitely postponed February 12, 1897
sounds to me like they just never got a Round Tuit
There was an attempt to outlaw i and it's use in mathematical equations. Lawmakers who objected to its use complained that it wasn't real and their constituents required too much imagination to accept it.
Physicians; it doesn't matter what profession or how many thousands of years of experience have gone into it, they know better than you. It comes from playing god on a regular basis.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
"It is impossible to compute the area of a circle on the diameter as the linear unit without trespassing upon the area outside of the circle to the extent of including one-fifth more area than is contained within the circle's circumference, because the square on the diameter produces the side of a square which equals nine when the arc of ninety degrees equals eight."
Not that other countrys' are any better, I suppose
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
actually you're right! ... but I've done some rehashing on my old coding skills.
I didn't even go to work today
3.141592652589.....
you crack me up, you do.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Anyone with education knows that Pi, the other irrational numbers, and most of Mathematics were invented either by Pagans, Muslim integrists or Communists. The bible speaks of 2 animals of each kind and division of children by two. No square roots, no integration.
Is there any mention to that 3.1415926... thing in it? Yes. It's called Satan, and the scientists use it to justify silly THEORIES such as evolution, TOE and heliocentrism.
If you want to be a good Christian, you must reject those diabolic numbers. You can keep using computers, as they abide by God's rules, but better make sure that you limit your programming to Integer BASIC and Assembly(avoiding the FP instructions).
Five fourths to four. WTF is that?
Fractions are big whack at the best of times (other than the obvious 1/4 1/2 3/4 etc) but 5/4?
Decimal and metric... it's the way to go... makes much more sense!
"After the debate, a Representative offered to introduce him to Dr. Goodwin. Professor Waldo replied that he was already acquainted with as many crazy people as he cared to know. "
And this is why scientists and intelligent people in general often have little success in politics.
I dont see why you would want to inform us now. Instead inform me when it happened 314 years ago.
The proposer is using a circular argument
As a Hoosier (DEF: born and currently a resident of Indiana), I confidently assure you that they would gleefully pass the bill today. Anyone objecting would be branded a pi-denier. [insert boring local politics]
No politician wants to be the one refusing to give our poor and homeless their much needed pi.
FairTax baby!
This happened 111.19 years ago, you must remember to include the leap years.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
They would have been behind their time literally, at least when they tried to make a pendulum clock! using T=2 *Pi * Sqrt(l/g) they would have produced a pendulum which was too long and therefore slow.
... a bill was introduced in Missouri (I think) which would have set the *official* value of pi to 3. It seems somebody decided it would be easier for children to learn how to use it. Well, that's Missouri for you !
One can only assume the proposal was made by Bloody Stupid Johnson.
It may not be just, but it is fair, and that is more important.
Here you go.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
The quote I'm getting at the bottom of the page seems particularly appropriate!
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann
Is it time to go home yet?
1897, c'mon slashdot this really is old news!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Apparently, the bill's main purpose wasn't to establish a value of Pi, but to provide a method to square the circle. Doubly retarded! Also, why do we need LEGISLATION of squaring the circle? What political significance does this hold, other than the fact that politicians can't math?
3.141592653589.....
Pi irrational for a flat earth.
For a spherical earth...
Excluding the extremes, point and plane, are all circumference/diameter(on the surface) ratios rational? If not, how many are not?
Five fourths to four. WTF is that?
It is exactly 5/4:4 Read it again.
The truth shall set you free!
I hope we read this in about 100 years.... About 100 years ago, the Dover Pennsylvania school board very nearly succeeded in enforcing 'introducing a new scientific truth,' that would have erroneously established intelligent design as a rational alternative to evolution. The story explaining the rationale behind the idiocy is best described by the federal judge who prevented the school board from ....
0.1, base 3?
Oh wait ;)
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
You just know it doesn't make sense.
Bitter and proud of it.
... no pie.
Hijacked. What's the deal with "3/4 to 4"? ... 3/4/4 = 3/16 = .1875?
3.2 is 16/5.
The fraction 355/113 approximates Pi to seven decimal places
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
In Soviet Russia, transcendental irrationality legislates you !
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It's a little scary. These days, I don't have much trouble imagining a scenario like that happening: some government or regulatory body dictates that the value of Pi is 3 for some inane or petty reason; an engineer is brought up on charges of mass terrorism for attempting to design a water tower using the accepted value of Pi, rather than the approved value; said engineer is convicted and jailed as a terrorist for trying to keep people safe. It sounds like a story you'd hear out of the old Soviet Union.
Or was the number always there?
I forget exactly but there's a little bit of acheological wanking about how accurate the first measurement of the earth's circumference is because they say something along the lines of "if the unit (stadia?) is taken to be 228.2 yards, then this is accurate to modern measurements to within 1%!!!" when they don't really know what the unit lenght was in modern measurements. So did they guess it so the numbers added up? Or was a stadia really 228.2 yards?
Way to fail. Four fifths to four would be like saying 'a number four fifths of the way to for', or more simply (4/5)*4.
"... not the word of an infallible being either."
You are going down a slippery slope. Next you will be saying the U.S. president wasn't right when he said "When Saudis attack, invade Iraq", and "The answer to violence is more violence", and "We'll show them! They killed 3,000 Americans, we'll kill more", and "The way to make Muslims more gentle is to attack and kill them".
4 / 1.25 = 3.2
They tried to outlaw pi but the mob started smuggling pi in from over the border.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
of 3.2 for Pi only proves this guy right...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I only can imagine the IQ of the mathematician presenting a square circle. If he only had known that calculus tries to do something similar with curves and rectangles. Of course, what was his purpose? Was he just trying to simplify finding areas of circles? Is (pi)r^2 that complex?
I bet there was a bet who could waste tax money in the most ridiculous fashion. Hmm.. by comparing the past with the present legislature, I bet there was no bet.
The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -- Unknown
Perhaps in another century or so they'll be able to decide on a time-zone.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Why wasn't this tagged as Old News? Come on 111 years ago!
Ayes - 67 - Noes -0-
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Justin Wilson, "The Cajun Cook", told this story on his cooking show. A Cajun fellow who'd never been past 5th grade was proud as could be to send his son to college. When he came home on break, the dad asked him "So, wha's ya larn, boy?"
The son thinks for a minute and says "PI r square!"
The dad says "WHAT! What kind o' tomfoolery is they teachin' you? Pie are round, cornbread are square!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Here's a good mathematical challenge. If Indiana had passed that law making pi 3.2, what would the eccentricity of tires sold in Indiana be?
Thankfully, they found him.
In scientific notation, you count the significant digits. All of the numbers have one (1) significant digit Not quite. "10 cubits" and "30 cubits" might be to either one or two significant figures; since it doesn't specify, there no way of telling which. If they had they been given in scientific notation, as either, e.g., "3*10^1" or "3.0*10^1", then you're right, that would have been one and two s.f. respectively; but "30 cubits" is ambiguous.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Interestingly, however, if you pick a particular circle, the ratio actually has a 100% probability of being irrational, rather than rational. Informally, this is because the irrationals are so much 'denser' than the rationals (using the colloquial rather than the topological meaning of dense). A proper proof follows from the fact that the rationals have Lebesgue measure 0; i.e. they can all be enclosed in a set of intervals on the real line, the sum of the lengths of which can be made as small as you like.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
It's the same thing as the Supreme Court calling Tomatoes a vegetable. It is a fruit. But because veggies were taxed more, the tomato became a veggie.
http://library.thinkquest.org/23062/pi.html
I'm not a mathematician, and don't fully understand the significance of squaring the circle, but it seems to me that they had a, (to most non-mathematicians), irrelevant problem, which they couldn't solve. So they responded by passing an unnecessary bill, redefining good math.
Sometimes it's best to just say "I don't know"
Take comfort in the fact that you don't have a real phobia.
Shouldn't this be followed by another oft repeated story, the "Great Whale Blowup" in Oregon?
Kings is not the word of God. It is written by unnamed humans (maybe Ezra). It is definitely not a blueprint for making the molten sea, it is a description. There are any number of reasons that the ratio doesn't work out. The most obvious is that whomever wrote it was a story teller, and "thirty one cubits and and one hands breadth and a tiny bit of a finger nail" messes up the flow of the text.
5/4:4 is 1.25/4 = .3125 which isn't close to the claimed 3.2
http://www.anthonares.net/2006/03/happy-pi-day.html
I'd like to file a motion that we observe this 111th anniversary as the centennial. The number 100 is more convenient and aesthetically pleasing.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
My favorite part of the bill is the final line, which reads:
And be it remembered that these noted problems had been long since given up by scientific bodies as insolvable mysteries and above man's ability to comprehend.
This, along with the rest of the math in the bill, makes it clear that the authors were the sort that only "believe" in rational numbers. Of course, by that time mathematicians already had a pretty good hold on the rest of the real numbers, and there wasn't any mystery at all about the existence of numbers that weren't the ration of two integers. The only real mystery here is why they preferred the approximation 3.2 rather than 3.1. Not that either is good enough for engineers, who routinely used 3 places as the minimal precision if you don't want to be laughed out of the room.
One of my favorite bits of mathematical humor is the many cases where they have taken criticisms and turned them into terminology. Thus, when it was realized that numbers like e and pi couldn't be written as ratios of integers, there were a lot of dummies who didn't accept this, and attacked the rationality of the people who did. The response of mathematicians was to say, in essence, "Hey, they call us irrational; that's a good word. Let's call the numbers that our critics believe in as 'rational', and the numbers that they don't believe in as 'irrational'. They'll be happy, and we'll have handy words for talking about these two kinds of numbers."
It happened again when people started talking about square roots of negative numbers (and engineers found practical uses for them in the real world). There were the usual criticisms, to the effect that negative numbers don't have square roots, and it's stupid to talk about things that don't exist. The natural (;-) reaction of the mathematicians was to first be bemused by the very idea that any kind of numbers have any sort of real existence. Then they adopted the critics' words as terminology, with 'real' numbers the sort that the critics accepted, and 'imaginary' numbers the kind that produced negative numbers when multiplied by themselves. That must have really played with the critics' minds. "Oh, you want to talk about real numbers; that's room 12A, just along the corridor. We're talking about imaginary numbers here. Stupid git."
Of course, there's the even more basic concept of 'natural' numbers, i.e., positive integers. It's clear from most most languages' words for numbers that most people historically have only dealt with this sort of number. Even today, many US high-school kids have a certain resistance to the idea that they have to learn about fractions, which strike them as 'unnatural' and pointless. So mathematicians adopted 'natural' as a subtle jab at the irrational attitude of the ignorant masses.
At least this bill's authors had enough understanding to accept rational numbers as real, though they classified irrational numbers like pi as "insolvable mysteries". It is sad (and funny) that as late as 1897 this sort of ignorance could actually make an appearance in a legislative body and apparently be taken as anything but a lame joke.
There have been other bills like this in the past, though as far as I've read, none of them has ever actually been passed, or even voted on. Anyone know of a case where one reached a vote?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Pi in the Bible As the article states, the Egyptians and others already had fairly accurate approximations of PI long before this passage was written.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Proper proof is that rationals are countable. That's why they have measure 0.
A story about a mistake that didn't actually happen?
I mean, jeez someone almost legislated PI to 3.2. big deal. How about "Smart legislators thwart movement to legislated 3.2 as PI!"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But if the rim is flared then there is no redundancy.
(Your other respondant is also right btw.)
By thinking you are so smart you ahve to give a 'hint' you loose.(Hint: Many of us knew that.)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My momma always told me not to trust a guy who claims he has solutions of the trisection of the angle, duplication of the cube and quadrature of the circle.
http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/strip.aspx?id=5974a9cc-6e05-47ab-8ad0-34d887c9353e
Waka Waka!
Its long been my desire to define some sort of Reimanian space that would use the fundamental constants in the metric. However, I was never very good in my Reimanian Geometry class. I took it without any of the perquisites. Some day, I'll take off 10 years like Einstien did and learn real Math.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Concerned readers of the rather lurid tale above may rest assured that its scandalous contents are entirely false.
Mr. Pi is a well known and well respected number in the mathematical community, who despite its irrational tendencies, has won the hearts of all decent magnitudes with its transcendental nature. A nature one might add, which intrinsically prevents it from appearing at the roots of any finite order equation, let alone one of only seventeenth order.
Mr. Pi is a good friend to many highly respected mathematical families such as the Trigonometric Functions and the Elliptic Functions. It is also known for its generous community work, appearing in many Geometrical texts and Physics equations, and in general is known far and wide for not holding itself above the common constant, despite its fame and status.
Mr. Pi has been known for years as a wonderful role model and teacher for polynomials of a small degree, particularly for second order equations. It has opened up worlds of possibility and inspired these young equations for many years, and it would be a great shame if this false, cruel and libelous fiction caused an end to those efforts.
I urge readers to reject and condemn this utterly false, malicious and libelous insult upon a good member of the mathematical community. We must not abandon the rigor and scruple that our community is renowned for, and succumb to emotive reasoning. The reader may be assured that however rational their coefficients, seventeenth order equations are known to come across irrational roots, of any multiplicity, all by themselves!
May the Maths Be with you!
To get from feet to cubits, you would divide by 1.5, not multiply by it.
Doesn't counter your point - just correcting a small error you made.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Use this search engine and you can report all of the positions in the first few billion decimal places that string (or any other) appears.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
but then again 10 would be 100.010221222212... which is a little awkward.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Meh, if the fundies get their panties in a bunch about 666/212, can't they simply reduce to 333/106?
With all these obvious thoughts about Pi, slashdotters have been involved in a bit of Transcendental Meditation...
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
I don't mind giving ownership of Pi to some clever patent lawyer. But no sneaking using a mathematical symbol. We need to know the EXACT value they want to patent. So they would first have to write down ALL the digits before I would be willing to hand over the patent.
In fact, I propose that we begin this process right now. Something as widely used as Pi is sure to bring in billions. We need to get ALL the lawyers busy writing down the digits of Pi immediately.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
This is Slashdot, and no one has picked up on this mathematical mistake yet? The article states "erroneously established pi as the ratio 'five-fourths to four' or 3.2" ... um, 5/4 : 4 = 5/16. What the article should have said is "the ratio 'four to five-fourths'". (Kind of a convoluted wording anyway; why not just "the ratio sixteen to five"?)
3.14 / 3 ~= 1.05
5% really isn't bad for something measured by forearm lengths yarded out along a length of rope. That's less than a knuckle-length per cubit.
I do first approximations all the time with much more than a 5% error (3.14 is a pain to multiply by in your head) and often even final work. Engineering is seldom an exact process. If I'm trying to figure out how many bricks I need to shore up a well, 5% error will get me really close, especially if I give myself a 10% margin.
As far as I know, the ancient Israelites did not have a tradition of mathematical rigor. 3:1 seems a pretty natural approximation.
of any number that can't be expressed as a fraction....
1.25 = 5/4, not 3/4 or 4/3rds even... How is this relevant?
or...I can't even read the summary... Ignore my post!
</dumbass>
--beckerist
355/113 is accurate to 7 decimal places (or about 3 metres on the circumference of the earth).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Or just remember that reciprocal of pi is 113/355.
...pie equals 8.53973422. Oh wait is that still my signature...
Besides the myriad reasons why this bill was stupid, there is one thing I just can't get my head around. If they wanted to round pi to one decimal place for whatever reason, why did they round it up to 3.2 instead of the closer 3.1?
The Hebrews did not know the modern units of foot, or inch. The cubit was not an accurate ancient unit. There was no concept of standard unit in Antiquity at all, in the modern sense.
In antiquity, people made up units on the spot when they needed them. They literally put knots in strings that were roughly the right length apart, and folded the lines to duplicate the unit. Nobody kept a standard in a special building to compare with, as we still do today. One man's foot was bigger than another man's, etc.
So why even talk about feet and inches? Easy. That's the trick. You can pick any number, say 1234.5678, and if you choose the right unit size, say a "floopy", then you can make 1234.5678 equal to pi floopies, with an error as small as you like. For example, say a "floopy" is 392.97513 cm. Then 1234.5678 is 3.1415927, ie it's pretty damn close to pi. Of course, you would never say a floopy is 392.97513 miles, because that's a much bigger error.
Holy shit, those floopy using Ancients were pretty accurate, just like those feet and inches using Hebrews were pretty accurate!
What people who write this numerology crap do is to sit down for hours and try different things to come up with nice looking numbers, but the trick is always the same. You can tell in your example it's a trick because there's funny numbers like 1.5 ft, and of course the foot is a modern unit. It's also pretty easy to pick another approximation with a different word if some of the letters don't work out, since 111/106 is nearly the same as 110/106 and 111/107 etc.
Or a complex anxiety disorder.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
my god... its full of strawmen....
Young Pioneer: I have learned in school today that "pi r squared", comrade papa!
Commissar: (Whack!)
Young Pioneer: Whaaaa! Why you hit me, papa?
Commissar: Because CAKE are SQUARED! PIE ARE ROUND, you stoopid revisionist!
(okay, so it probably plays better when set in Mississippi)
.
- aqk
F U
Engineering 101: Your math is only as good as your tape measure.
Just pull up the most useful math constants pages through wikipedia and use them as the source for your patents.
;) 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 is what the windows cal uses so that's far more than good enough for your average person. What do you really need that many digits in pi for anyway? ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
Any one that pretends to be a math geek should have a book like Mathematics: From the Birth of Numbers setting on their shelf somewhere.
(http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Birth-Numbers-Jan-Gullberg/dp/039304002X/ref=pd_sim_b_title_45) It has a very interesting section on the history of computing pi and the various methods. If I recall correctly, there was brief contest of who could put the most digits, but then it was "discovered" that you could use some method to put as many digits as you wanted. I think it got boring at that point and the real math guys moved to other stuff. 22/7 and 355/113 were "good enough" before computers and if you really cared about the precision then you'd be using the better methods to obtain as many freaking digits as you needed. Now that we've got computers, the computer guys have done pi to millions/billions of digits, but only number theory geeks care about that.