lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (04/04/84)
Last year I saw a videotape of a colloquium entitled, "Universality and Singularity - Phase Transitions and Our Understanding of the Physical World". I posted something about it at the time, but I'm mentioning it now in connection with the "biblical value of pi". The speaker actually had a viewgraph of the verse from I Kings which implies pi = 3. He compared this with a more modern numerical crudity, consisting in the assumption that the function expressing the approach to a phase transition was quadratic. His point was that the assumption was implicit and uncritical, and further that it would be a mistake to deem ourselves too far superior in our understanding of the world than the ancients. Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew
boyajian@akov68.DEC (04/06/84)
I think there are a couple of people who lost the point. The person or people who first brought up the whole business did not do so to sit smugly in judgement as to what dumbshits the ancients were by equating pi to 3. The fact that the Bible implies that pi=3 *is not the point*! The point is that some group was being stupid enough to want a state legislature to pass a law making pi=3 *because it said so in the Bible!* --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC Maynard) UUCP: (decvax!decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian) ARPA: (decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian@Shasta)
ward@hao.UUCP (Mike Ward) (04/09/84)
[] > The point is that some group was being stupid enough to want a state > legislature to pass a law making pi=3 *because it said so in the Bible!* Thank you, Jerry. -- Michael Ward, NCAR/SCD UUCP: {hplabs,nbires,brl-bmd,seismo,menlo70}!hao!ward BELL: 303-497-1252 USPS: POB 3000, Boulder, CO 80307
jmiller@ctvax.UUCP (04/16/84)
#R:hao:-90900:ctvax:38800002:000:1310 ctvax!jmiller Apr 15 17:26:00 1984 The explanation I had always heard for the attempt to make pi = 3 was that it was essentially an attempt to make it easier for farmers to prepare their tax returns. Farmers had to estimate the amount of grain stored in their (cylindrical) grain elevators, and, in those pre-calculator days, multiplying something by 3.1415926... was a real pain. The proposal was to let them use 3 for pi in the formula for the volume of the elevator, and then adjust the tax tables so that everything worked out more or less correctly. However, the newspapers picked up only part of the story, screwed up a few things, and reported that there was a bunch of dumb farmers out there trying to redefine mathematical principles by a vote of the legislature, imposing weird religious beliefs on the public at the same time. Once this happened, of course, the bill never had a chance. This explanation has the disadvantage that it actualy makes a certain amount of sense, and doesn't let us make fun of a bunch of dumb farmers out there trying to redefine mathematical principles by a vote of the legislature, imposing weird religious beliefs on the public at the same time. On the other hand, I wasn't there at the time, so there may be hope after all....:-) Jim Miller, Computer * Thought, Dallas ...nbires!ctvax!jmiller