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."

Comments

Re:What's wrong with that?

[Ihlosi]

And far less disastrous.

Apparently, you haven't imagined yet what many engineering projects would be like if they assumed that pi = 3.2.

Re:In Kansas...

[KefabiMe]

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.

What's really sad is I don't know if that's a joke or if it's informative.

I mean, and I'm 100% serious here... It could go either way. I have no clue!

Re:Blashphemy !

[sed quid in infernos]

Which doesn't say that pi = 3 any more than saying "And he [Hiram] made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one rim to the other it was round all about, and...a line of thirty-one and four-tenths cubits did compass it round about....And it was an hand breadth thick...." says that pi = 3.14. Pi is, in fact, equal to neither of those numbers, nor to 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510. It is an irrational number for which any representation in digits is an approximation. And 3 is the proper approximation of pi to one significant digit.

Re:And this is why

[ettlz]

And this is why scientists and intelligent people in general often have little success in politics.

It's called dignity.

The Slashdot headline in 2105

[williegeorgie]

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 ....

Re:Blashphemy !

[sapphire wyvern]

Or fourth option: we're misinterpreting the text, helped along by reading our desired conclusion into it. Apparently another quote concerning the same object mentions that it had a flared rim "like a lily". So if you measure the diameter of the flared rim, but the circumference of the (narrower) cylindrical portion of the sides, you're definitely not going to end up with a good approximation of pi. Personally I think there are much more valid reasons for criticising the scientific validity & alleged inerrancy of the Bible than that little gem. It really takes effort to read that quote as a statement that pi = 3.0. There are other less credible justifications: eg, that the cubit was not a well defined unit (doubtful in my mind, you wouldn't be able to do very good architecture or even carpentry without a measurement unit consistent from one dimension of an object to another). And even utterly specious arguments hinging on numerological rubbish.

Re:Blashphemy !

[swillden]

The fifth option is far more likely: Accurately measuring and recording the circumference wasn't that important to them, so they either didn't measure it well, or else they rounded it off. The diameter probably wasn't exactly 10 cubits, either.