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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 14 2017, @03:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-the-facts-straight dept.

It is the 120th anniversary of the passing of a bill by the House of Congress of Indiana to change the value of pi to 3.2! [Errors in the original are copied here verbatim. -Ed]

Weird as it sounds, in effect the House voted 67-0 on H.B. 246 "Introducing a new mathematical truth" on February 5th, 1897 and referred to the Senate of Indiana.

On February 2, 1897 Representative S. E. Nicholson, of Howard County, chairman of the Committee on Education, reported to the House:

"Your Committee on Education, to which was referred House Bill No. 246, entitled a bill for an act entitled an act introducing a new mathematical truth, has had same under consideration, and begs leave to report the same back to the House with the recommendation that said bill do pass."

The bill was duly passed to the Senate on February 10th and read on the 11th, then referred to the Temperance Committee. On February 12 Senator Harry S. New, of Marion County, Chairman of the Committee on Temperance made the following report to the Senate:

"Your Committee on Temperance, to which was referred House Bill No. 246, introduced by Mr. Record, has had the same under consideration. and begs leave to report the same back to the Senate with the recommendation that said bill do pass."

On the afternoon of February 12 "Senator Bozeman called up House Bill No. 246. The bill was read a second time by title. Senator Hogate moved to amend the bill by striking out the enacting clause. The motion was lost. Senator Hubbell moved to postpone the further consideration of this bill indefinitely. Which motion prevailed."

The bill was never voted on, it was simply postponed following ridicule from the press. "Senator Hubbell characterized the bill as utter folly. The Senate might as well try to legislate water to run up hill as to establish mathematical truth by law. Leading papers all over the country, he said, were ridiculing the Indiana Legislature. It was outrageous that the State of Indiana should pay $250 a day to have time wasted on such frivolous matters."

A very interesting story by Will E. Edington then at DePauw University, published by the Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science. Sorry PDF only.


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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:50PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:50PM (#467029)

    Not to mention, you can't even round pi to 3.2 in a way that makes sense in the first place. 3.14159 rounded to the closest tenth is 3.1.

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @06:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14 2017, @06:11PM (#467039)

    Yeah, but 3.2 is even. When in doubt, always round to even numbers: in the long run you'll be rounding up and down about the same amount (since there are approximately as many even as odd numbers - we could of course also chose to always round to odd, but even numbers have better divisibility so even it is.) so that eventually evens out. 3.2 obviously is the best value for pi: otherwise we would have to round up all the way to 4, which would be ridiculous.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 14 2017, @06:22PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday February 14 2017, @06:22PM (#467044)

      Yeah, but 3.2 is even. When in doubt, always round to some completely arbitrary technobabble

      Clear as mud, thanks. I was rather surprised one time when I was writing something using Visual Studio and apparently their math library's rounding methods are "towards zero" or "away from zero." Hmmm.

      Plus the reasoning is allegedly to make circling the square work, so they might as well use perpetual motion to justify the change in the first place :P

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      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"