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."

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:WTF?

[Aranykai]

Ok, please let me know how to accurately express one divided into three equally. I have been stuck using 1/3 far too long.

The slashdot quote of the day is perfect...

[sapphire wyvern]

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann

How could anything be more perfectly apt for this article?

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 !

[iangoldby]

Except that your explanation assumes:

a) the measurements are not rounded.
This seems quite unlikely for a start. Should the author have written "He made the Sea ... measuring nine point five five cubits from rim to rim..."?

b) the Sea was a plain cylinder.
Another possibility, not ruled out by the text, and certainly well within the realms of probability is that the rim had a lip or a flare to it. So the distance from rim to rim would be greater than the distance across the circumference measured lower down by the line. (Think about the practical difficulty of measuring with a line around the outside of a flared rim.)

In fact it doesn't matter which of the above two explanations is more likely, since no one (apart from those trying to point out inconsistencies in the Bible) is asserting that the story quoted says anything at all about the accurate value for pi.

Re:Blashphemy !

[mwvdlee]

But since they were working with double digits, atleast they should have been able to aproximate to 1 digit more. So, to bring it back to religion, either we've got it wrong, or the bible got it wrong. Or the third option ofcourse; the writers of the bible took some artistic liberties.

Re:Blashphemy !

[Botia]

They are not working with double digits. They are using single digits:

10 cubits = 1 * 10^1 cubits
30 cubits = 3 * 10^1 cubits
PI = (3 * 10^1) / (1 * 10^1) = 3 * 10^0

Doesn't anyone know math or science? In scientific notation, you count the significant digits. All of the numbers have one (1) significant digit. It's amazing God got it right thousands of years before science was invented. Go figure.

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 !

[AccUser]

Er, the 10 cubits is surely the surface measurement of the bowl, rather than the radius, so this could be accurate. Although I'm sure that I will be modded down for this.

Just my two shekels worth.

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.

Re:Blashphemy !

[It'sYerMam]

Numerology wins you no points. If you translate "No God" by a=1, b=2 etc then you get the string of numbers 14157154, which is actually found in pi at the about the 142 thousandth digit. What does this mean? Nothing.

Re:Blashphemy !

[digitig]

And where does it say it was circular?

Re:Blashphemy !

[saforrest]

It gives an error of 0.00265%. Quite remarkable.

Quite remarkable indeed. One might even call it special pleading.

The q has a value of 100; the v has a value of 6; thus, the normal spelling would yield a numerical value of 106. The addition of the h, with a value of 5, increases the numerical value to 111.

Hebrew letters have associated numerical values, that's well known. For the purposes of the argument I'll accept that these letters have the cited values.

But exactly how did they come up with this particular formula? Given three numbers [A,B,C] what methodology tells them to interpret the combination as the ratio (A+B)/(A+B+C) and not, say, A+B+C or A+B*C, or (A+B)/(A+C)? I don't think there is such a methodology, and I think this means that they will pick whatever formula works for the occasion.

Re:Blashphemy !

[Firehed]

I'm pretty sure you're well past the point where memorizing 3.1415926535 is much easier.

Re:Blashphemy !

[Jesus_666]

Patent the process of "dividing two, common whole numbers for the purpose of usefully approximating the ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle".

That will get shot down immediately. You need to prefix it with "a computational device used for" and turn it into a software patent.

Re:Blashphemy !

[SydShamino]

But there are people [mikehuckabee.com] who say that every word of the bible is literal truth. You've just attempted to claim that the bible approximated something - in other words, that it's not 100% true.

Normally we'd just ignore those people, and agree that the bible rounded something for brevity. But when those people represent a significant proportion of the voting public (fortunately, splitting their vote between two candidates), it's worth pointing out that they exist and would have burned you at the stake 300 years ago for making such a blasphemous claim.

Re:Blashphemy !

[Citizen of Earth]

'God' is "close enough" if you are working with a primitive understanding of the world and the universe and have no interest in actual reality.

Re:Really? This is where /. has gotten to?

[CaptainCarrot]

It's also a well-known bit of historical legislative foolishness often cited to demonstrate the kind of bad decisions possible in a representative system of government. In an election year, it's a valuable reminder of how we need to keep a close eye on these people.

Considering the repeated movements to introduce other bits of absurdity into school curricula (ID, anyone?) it's well worth talking about.