weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (03/23/86)
Followups to net.math only. In article <17600006@inmet> brianu@inmet.UUCP writes: >> (I confess to being inspired by >>a bill was once introduced into the, I think, Tennessee state legislature >>to get PI set to 3 so it would be easier to work with). > >Lies, lies, lies. I have heard this story about PI many times now. Finally >I ran across a book (the title of which I can't recall) which explained that >little bit of folklore. (This is from memory, so don't quote me) >It seems that faction A introduced a bill that faction B opposed (ain't it >always the way?) Faction A was strong in congress as a whole but faction B >was strong in the committee assigned to review the bill. So, faction B placed >a rider on the bill such that PI will henceforth have the value of 3. Faction >B figured that congress wouldn't dare pass it then. Wrong again. It passed. >So it had nothing to do with ease of usage or anything else like that. >Now doesn't that make more sense? I've never heard that version. As I try to follow these stories, I think it is apocryphal. Although a lot of stupid laws do get passed that way. I remember _The Mathematical Intelligencer_ running an article not too long ago with a discussion of the aborted Indiana attempt. One half of the legislature mindlessly passed the law that someone introduced to please his friend, whose geometrical description was so inept that no one could derive a value of pi from it. The other half failed to pass it, barely, but only because the newspapers heard about it and had a field day. Seems a free press IS needed to control our legislators. :-) He also mentioned an existing German law describing how to tax car engines that, if read literally, implied an erroneous method for finding the volume of a cylinder and hence for pi. Surprisingly, it gives a smaller tax this way. Perhaps that is why no one is clamoring to get the right value in. A weird book on pi with a long description of the Indiana fiasco is Petr Beckmann _A History of Pi_. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer) (03/24/86)
In article <12565@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) writes: >Followups to net.math only. (I believe this is automatic if you put "Followup-To:" in the header.) >A weird book on pi with a long description of the Indiana fiasco is Petr >Beckmann _A History of Pi_. See also _Mathematics Magazine_, Vol. 50 No. 3 (May, 1977), pp. 136-140. (They include the text of Indiana House Bill No. 246.) More recently (1981?) there's been some eccentric mathematician who claims that pi = sqrt(10). His book was priced at $31.62 (~= 10 "pi" = "pi"^3). When I first heard this, I wondered what is the most elementary proof that pi < sqrt(10)? (I'd guess a circumscribed 24-gon.)
gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith) (03/25/86)
In article <659@bentley.UUCP> kwh@bentley.UUCP (KW Heuer) writes: > >More recently (1981?) there's been some eccentric mathematician who claims >that pi = sqrt(10). His book was priced at $31.62 (~= 10 "pi" = "pi"^3). Is a person who says pi = 10^(1/2) really a "mathematician"? ucbvax!brahms!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 Imagine what the world would be like if football was a worthy ritual performed in stadiums but mathematics was a misunderstood activity ignored by almost all.
buyno@voder.UUCP (Matthew Buynoski) (03/26/86)
Some long time ago, there was a movement afoot in the Indiana(?) Legislature that pi be declared = 3 "for the convenience of school children." Fortunately, it did not pass. :wq
percus@acf4.UUCP (Allon G. Percus) (03/28/86)
> ...(I confess to being inspired by > a bill was once introduced into the, I think, Tennessee state legislature > to get PI set to 3 so it would be easier to work with). The reasons for this was not so it would be easier to work with: they were religious. Tennessee, being one of the "Bible states," decided to follow the biblical reference that the diameter of a wheel is three times larger than the longest distance between two points on it. . ------- |-----| A. G. Percus |II II| (ARPA) percus@acf4 |II II| (NYU) percus.acf4 |II II| (UUCP) ...{allegra!ihnp4!seismo}!cmcl2!acf4!percus |II II| -------
msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) (03/28/86)
Matthew P. Wiener (weemba@brahms.UUCP) writes: > I remember _The Mathematical Intelligencer_ running an article not too long Reference please? I'd like to read it. > ago with a discussion of the aborted Indiana attempt. One half of the > legislature mindlessly passed the law that someone introduced to please his > friend, whose geometrical description was so inept that no one could derive > a value of pi from it. The bill actually included the words: the ratio of the diameter and circumference is as five-fourths to four. The usual definition of pi is the reciprocal of the above, which makes it clearly 3.2 according to the bill. This is not to see that the bill is not indeed inept. Look at the strange mode of expression; this is typical. And there seems to be at least one arithmetic error elsewhere in addition to the basic non-facts. [Another of the latter is a new formula for computing the area of a circle: in effect A = (pi^2 / 4) * (r^2), i.e., A = 2.56 * r^2.] I seem to have thrown away the online text that I posted to the net a couple of years ago, but I'll type it in again IF there's a demand. Or did anyone save a copy? Mark Brader
drh@burl.UUCP (drh) (03/31/86)
In article <5980011@acf4.UUCP> percus@acf4.UUCP (Allon G. Percus) writes: >The reasons for [the Tennessee legistature trying to set PI to 3] >was not so it would be easier to work with: >they were religious. Tennessee, being one of the "Bible states," >decided to follow the biblical reference that the diameter of a wheel >is three times larger than the longest distance between two points on >it. Can Mr. Percus please supply us with this bible reference? I can't find it anywhere. -- Richard Hipp AT&T Technologies, Burlington, NC (919)-228-3832 ...allegra!burl!drh