House of Eratosthenes

Somehow, the subject came up in the office about laws being passed to make Pi a certain number. One of our contractors forwarded me this thing from the Huffington Post later in the day.

Congresswoman Martha Roby (R-Ala.) is sponsoring HR 205, The Geometric Simplification Act, declaring the Euclidean mathematical constant of pi to be precisely 3.
:
“That long-held empirical value of pi, I am not saying it should be necessarily viewed as wrong, but 3 is a lot better,” said Roby, the 34-year old legislator representing Alabama’s second congressional district, ushered into office in the historic 2010 Republican mid-term bonanza.

Pi has long been defined as the ratio of a circle’s area to the square of its radius, a mathematical constant represented by the Greek letter “π,” with a value of approximately 3.14159. HR 205 does not change the root definition, per se. The bill simply, and legally, declares pi to be exactly 3.
:
“For decades, we’ve all been learning that pi is this crazy ‘irrational’ number. And any number with no end is, not, well, it makes it really hard,” Roby said. “We talked about making pi 3-and-a-third, but that wouldn’t really help, because you’re still then stuck with endless threes.”

Okay, so that’s the left-wing fantasy “Palin says she can see Russia from her house” version, meaning it makes them feel good to think it really happened. But what are the facts? Twenty years ago, Straight Dope dug into it and here’s what they found.

It happened in Indiana. Although the attempt to legislate pi was ultimately unsuccessful, it did come pretty close. In 1897 Representative T.I. Record of Posen county introduced House Bill #246 in the Indiana House of Representatives. The bill, based on the work of a physician and amateur mathematician named Edward J. Goodwin (Edwin in some accounts), suggests not one but three numbers for pi, among them 3.2…

Now I know what you’re thinking: If this T.I. Record was a democrat, then that will round this whole thing out as just yet another example of democrats doing something silly, bigoted and irrational and then, recalling it much later through those thick mists of “makes me feel good to think such-and-such,” projecting the behavior on to their enemies the Republicans.

Not that it really says a whole lot, having happened in 1897 and all. But it certainly would have to be added to such a list.

Well…okay. Go ahead and tack that puppy on to the list. They can’t seem to stop, huh?

RECORD (RECORDS), Taylor I. HOUSE, 1897 (POSEY). Born October 12, 1846, Greene County, Indiana. Attended common schools. Married Sallie A. Cox, 1867 (4 children) – died 1882; married Mary Yeager, 1883 (1 child). Farmer; timber and lumber merchant. Democrat. Died November 20, 1912, Lynn Township, Posey County, Indiana. [emphasis mine]

Why did I suspect it was the democrats who had actually started this? Easy. I have found it to be a fair generalization that, if some supposition goes against the plain truth — but it might be acceptable to those among us who have never built anything, and never will have to build anything, that stays built — the democrats are almost always the ones promoting it. And you can’t build a grain silo, or a gun barrel, if you think Pi is 16/5.

I saw that, to someone charged with the responsibility of designing or creating something that had to actually work, it would be unacceptable to pretend Pi is something different from what it really is. For everyone else, it just might be okay. And that nailed it shut for me…must be democrats. I was right.

Actually, although the suggestion that Pi be legislated to be 3 is mathematically absurd, it makes a kind of engineering sense.

A value of 3 is less than 5% in error. In the great majority of engineering problems the basic design data has very much larger errors in it, in civil engineering often approaching or even exceeding 50%.

Modern pocket calculators have Pi keys so using the correct value is no effort. But in 1846 calculations were down by hand (no sliderules) so a 5% error would have been acceptable.

I surprised they didn’t propose making the value of e 3 as well. This would have created bigger errors, but again smaller than the underlying data.
- Bob Sykes | 03/25/2011 @ 10:24
Yes, you’re right. It isn’t fair to insult people from 1897 without putting some thought into how things worked at that time, and this does change a few things.

I would argue my put-down still holds, even in the snarkiest parts. This is one of the reasons I chose the gun barrel analogy. In fact, doesn’t this make even better sense when you look at it from the perspective of the turn of the century? Here & there a story might have been told from the Civil War, about a gun blowing up in a soldier’s hand because of inferior workmanship/maintenance. Innovations in micrometers arrived in 1848, 1867 and 1888; you had the industrial revolution well underway, with all its internal combustion engines, steam engines, turbines, etc.

I’m sure it didn’t become an important concept to the man-in-the-street until the automobile market developed, to such a level that you could think about buying a car on an “average” wage, which came many years after 1897. But — isn’t that exactly the point? Legislating based on the way the world has been functioning, up until now, according to the rustic concepts most familiar to the greatest number of people. No looking-down-the-road, none whatsoever. Just like…well, any one of a number of things our modern democrats propose. Curtailing carbon emissions, ObamaCare, DDT is scary & bad, sanctions will work against Saddam Hussein & war won’t…

But the point is, democrats projecting their failings onto conservatives and Republicans. Making up stories so it remains easy to believe in it…so that there will be some momentum behind the next made-up story…and always putting a punchline at the end, so if they’re ever called on it they can say “Aw, I was just making a joke lighten up.”
- mkfreeberg | 03/25/2011 @ 10:38
And you can’t build a grain silo, or a gun barrel, if you think Pi is 16/5.

I learned in junior high math that Pi is defined as 22/7. Why can’t we legislate it to be that? (Course, here we are talking about a mathematical constant that’s been in use for centuries, while debt is spiraling out of control, millions are unemployed, the housing market is a mess, three wars are going on, gas prices are ridiculous….)

Pi has long been defined as the ratio of a circle’s area to the square of its radius, a mathematical constant represented by the Greek letter “π,” with a value of approximately 3.14159

More simply, it’s the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. πD or 2πr.

In the great majority of engineering problems the basic design data has very much larger errors in it, in civil engineering often approaching or even exceeding 50%.

I find that scary – and hard to believe.

I’ve seen the way bridges are built, how the crew starts at both ends simultaneously (on opposite riverbanks) and then meet in the middle of the waterway. If either of them is off by an inch, the bridge won’t work. Likewise with anything made of metal that’s measured to hundredths of an inch (like a rifle chamber) or any number of calculations made in the space program (like putting a rover on Mars).

Course, my grandfather used to say, “Pi R squared? No, pie R round. Cornbread R square.”
- cylarz | 03/25/2011 @ 21:22
I should have been clearer. The 50% error is in the expected loads, forces, required capacities, traffic flows, etc. We frequently make a best guess based on personal and group experience, published records, etc., and then multiply it by a safety factor.

The design details based on these estimates are calculated to a very fine degree. The tolerances in engine manufacture are on the order of thousandths of an inch, and in many applications they are much finer. This is not because the loads on the engine are well-known (they aren’t) but because the parts must fit together.

But the actual horse power output (watts if you’re metric) that is believed to be needed has a significant error in it.
- Bob Sykes | 03/26/2011 @ 13:11
Yeah, I was thinking about this some more. You know what functional application would rate very high on the list of those demanding a workable concept of Pi in this year of 1897…a winch. How many times do you need to work this crank in order to raise this drawbridge. Or pull that stranded ditch digger out of a well…

22/7 would do just fine.

But the point is — this lauded group of nameless busybodies, who in turn used their superhuman powers of judgment to point their antenna at yet some other nameless busybody…and all together, we have decided you lowly vermin who toil away at the actual WORK shall use this number. And to hell with your on-the-job experience and whatever mathematical scribblings you might have learned to perform — the whole silly situation has “democrat” written all over it.
- mkfreeberg | 03/26/2011 @ 13:32

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Legislating PiFriday, March 25th, 2011

Legislating Pi
Friday, March 25th, 2011