State Legislature Redefines Pi??

[RodWilson]

A friend forwarded me this post about a State Legislature redefining
Pi to be in agreement with the Bible. It cant possibly be true; it
must be some April Fool's joke still making the rounds....can anyone
here veryify or refute it?.........

>>> HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA engineers and mathematicians in this high-tech
>>> >city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state legistature
>>> >narrowly passed a law yesterday redefining pi, a mathematical constant
>>> >used in the aerospace industry. The bill to change the value of pi to
>>> >exactly three was introduced without fanfare by Leonard Lee Lawson (R,
>>> >Crossville), and rapidly gained support after a letter-writing campaign
>>> >by members of the Solomon Society, a traditional values group.
>>> >Governor Guy Hunt says he will sign it into law on Wednesday.
>>> >
>>> >The law took the state's engineering community by surprise. "It would
>>> >have been nice if they had consulted with someone who actually uses
>>> >pi," said Marshall Bergman, a manager at the Ballistic Missile Defense
>>> >Organization. According to Bergman, pi is a Greek letter that
>>> >signifies the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
>>> >It is often used by engineers to calculate missile trajectories.
>>> >
>>> >Prof. Kim Johanson, a mathematician from University of Alabama, said
>>> >that pi is a universal constant, and cannot arbitrarily be changed by
>>> >lawmakers. Johanson explained that pi is an irrational number, which
>>> >means that it has an infinite number of digits after the decimal point
>>> >and can never be known exactly. Nevertheless, she said, pi is precisly
>>> >defined by mathematics to be "3.14159, plus as many more digits as you
>>> >have time to calculate".
>>> >
>>> >"I think that it is the mathematicians that are being irrational, and
>>> >it is time for them to admit it," said Lawson. "The Bible very
>>> >clearly says in I Kings 7:23 that the alter font of Solomon's Temple
>>> >was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in diameter, and that it was
>>> >round in compass."
>>> >
>>> >Lawson called into question the usefulness of any number that cannot be
>>> >calculated exactly, and suggested that never knowing the exact answer
>>> >could harm students' self-esteem. "We need to return to some absolutes
>>> >in our society," he said, "the Bible does not say that the font was
>>> >thirty-something cubits. Plain reading says thirty cubits. Period."
>>> >
>>> >Science supports Lawson, explains Russell Humbleys, a propulsion
>>> >technician at the Marshall Spaceflight Center who testified in support
>>> >of the bill before the legislature in Mongtomery on Monday. "Pi is
>>> >merely an artifact of Euclidean geometry." Humbleys is working on a
>>> >theory which he says will prove that pi is determined by the geometry
>>> >of three-dimensional space, which is assumed by physicists to be
>>> >"isotropic", or the same in all directions.
>>> >
>>> >"There are other geometries, and pi is different in every one of them,"
>>> >says Humbleys. Scientists have arbitrarily assumed that space is
>>> >Euclidean, he says. He points out that a circle drawn on a spherical
>>> >surface has a different value for the ratio of circumfence to
>>> >diameter. "Anyone with a compass, flexible ruler, and globe can see
>>> >for themselves," suggests Humbleys, "its not exactly rocket science."
>>> >
>>> >Roger Learned, a Solomon Society member who was in Montgomery to
>>> >support the bill, agrees. He said that pi is nothing more than an
>>> >assumption by the mathematicians and engineers who were there to argue
>>> >against the bill. "These nabobs waltzed into the capital with an
>>> >arrogance that was breathtaking," Learned said. "Their prefatorial
>>> >deficit resulted in a polemical stance at absolute contraposition to
>>> >the legislature's puissance."
>>> >
>>> >Some education experts believe that the legislation will affect the way
>>> >math is taught to Alabama's children. One member of the state
>>> >school board, Lily Ponja, is anxious to get the new value of pi into
>>> the
>>> >state's math textbooks, but thinks that the old value should be
>>> >retained as an alternative. She said, "As far as I am concerned, the
>>> >value of pi is only a theory, and we should be open to all
>>> >interpretations." She looks forward to students having the freedom to
>>> >decide for themselves what value pi should have.
>>> >
>>> >Robert S. Dietz, a professor at Arizona State University who has
>>> >followed the controversy, wrote that this is not the first time a state
>>> >legislature has attempted to redifine the value of pi. A legislator in
>>> >the state of Indiana unsuccessfully attempted to have that state set
>>> >the value of pi to three. According to Dietz, the lawmaker was
>>> >exasperated by the calculations of a mathematician who carried pi to
>>> >four hundred decimal places and still could not achieve a rational
>>> >number. > >Many experts are warning that this is just the beginning of
>>> a national >battle over pi between traditional values supporters and the
>>> technical >elite. Solomon Society member Lawson agrees. "We just want
>>> to return >pi to its traditional value," he said, "which, according to
>>> the Bible, >is three."
>>
>

[Bob Carroll]

RodWilson wrote in message <6h5jn0$jq9$1...@nutmeg.uchc.edu>...

>
> A friend forwarded me this post about a State Legislature redefining
>Pi to be in agreement with the Bible. It cant possibly be true; it
>must be some April Fool's joke still making the rounds....can anyone
>here veryify or refute it?.........
>
>>>> HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA engineers and mathematicians in this high-tech
>>>> >city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state legistature
>>>> >narrowly passed a law yesterday redefining pi, a mathematical constant
>>>> >used in the aerospace industry. The bill to change the value of pi to
>>>> >exactly three

Post (and hoax) of the month?

Bob Carroll

[Tim DeLaney]

Your surmise is correct -- it was an April Fool's gag. Look at the
source attribution, "Associmated Press" (or something like that), IIRC.

--
Tim DeLaney

"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking
about, and express it in numbers, you know something about
it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge
is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind ...
--- Lord Kelvin

[Robert J. Pease]

Tim DeLaney wrote:
>
> RodWilson wrote:
> >
> > A friend forwarded me this post about a State Legislature redefining
> > Pi to be in agreement with the Bible. It cant possibly be true; it
> > must be some April Fool's joke still making the rounds....can anyone
> > here veryify or refute it?.........
> >
> > >>> HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA engineers and mathematicians in this high-tech
> > >>> >city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state legistature
> > >>> >narrowly passed a law yesterday redefining pi, a mathematical constant
> > >>> >used in the aerospace industry.

snip rest

> Your surmise is correct -- it was an April Fool's gag. Look at the
> source attribution, "Associmated Press" (or something like that), IIRC.
>
> --

hoaxes and April Fool Jokes aside,

What's interesting is that the reputation of the mentality of
Southern politicians is so jaded that no one in their
right mind would give any odds AGAINST such a thing
actually happening.

[The Corrector]

Does reality make PI, or does PI make reality?
Does PI only have relative existance in 3space
or is it the cause of 3space?

TC

In article <3536E1...@pop3.concentric.net>, bobp...@concentric.net
says...

>
>Tim DeLaney wrote:
>>
>> RodWilson wrote:
>> >
>> > A friend forwarded me this post about a State Legislature redefining
>> > Pi to be in agreement with the Bible. It cant possibly be true; it
>> > must be some April Fool's joke still making the rounds....can anyone
>> > here veryify or refute it?.........
>> >
>> > >>> HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA engineers and mathematicians in this
high-tech
>> > >>> >city are stunned and infuriated after the Alabama state legistature
>> > >>> >narrowly passed a law yesterday redefining pi, a mathematical
constant
>> > >>> >used in the aerospace industry.

> snip rest

>> Your surmise is correct -- it was an April Fool's gag. Look at the
>> source attribution, "Associmated Press" (or something like that), IIRC.
>>
>> --
>

[Robert J. Pease]

The Corrector wrote:
>
> Does reality make PI, or does PI make reality?
> Does PI only have relative existance in 3space
> or is it the cause of 3space?
>
> TC
>

Actually PI is the essence of SMALLNESS.

The path of Minimum disatance that is closed is a Circle.
**************
sidetrack:
Answer.... Pi r squared.

Question:
1. (sixth grade)...What do you say when your mother cooks a pie in a
cakepan?

2. What is the formula for the area of a Hhjkasbbyz ???

[Mike Painter]

Robert J. Pease wrote in message <3538A4...@pop3.concentric.net>...

>The Corrector wrote:
>>
>> Does reality make PI, or does PI make reality?
>> Does PI only have relative existance in 3space
>> or is it the cause of 3space?
>>
>> TC
>>
>
>Actually PI is the essence of SMALLNESS.
>
>The path of Minimum disatance that is closed is a Circle.
>**************
>sidetrack:
>Answer.... Pi r squared.

NO NO NO.
Cornbread are square.
Pie are round.