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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 VLM on Tuesday February 14 2017, @07:08PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 14 2017, @07:08PM (#467060)

    Education is like religion in that there's a lot of fight between sects over "we gonna do what they do but without astronomy" or "we gonna copy them with the addition of architecture".

    quadrivium lists geometry by name, so if he's more than 2000 or so years old I'm thinking there's merely a misunderstanding .... Although I suppose there are a lot of things running under the rather generic name of "classical education".

    I bet some "great books" curricula tend away from geometry which is probably hard to learn from a book for most people. So there's that whole blur where classical and great books are both gonna read Plutarch but there ARE differences.

    What is really classical education and what the law makers learned as kids in 1800 might have nothing to do with each other, of course.

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