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