Stale Legislative Pi

This article at io9.com is a fun exploration of an attempt in the late 19th century to get the Indiana legislature to declare the value of pi to be 3.2 It's pretty entertaining and has a little bit of educational stuff going on as well -- the man who pushed for the legislation had apparently developed a mathematical method of doing something called "squaring the circle," but it required pi to be 3.2 exactly instead of the infinitely extending fraction we know it to be, starting with 3.14159 and going on from there.

"Squaring the circle" is a way of referring to a specific geometrical problem: Using just a compass and a straightedge, construct a square that has exactly the same area as a given circle. The problem is that a square's area can be determined with a very basic formula: s2, where s is the length of the side of the square. No matter what number s is, simple multiplication gives the area of the square made up of four lines of that length.

But in order to figure the area of the circle, you have to use pi or π, as it's usually written. The formula is area = πr2, with r being the radius of the circle -- the distance from the midpoint to the edge. In order to make the area of the square equal the area of the circle, you have to create an equation between them, and that equation runs into problems because π doesn't repeat and doesn't stop. Dr. Edwin Goodman, a physician who believed God had revealed to him the fact that π should be 3.2, set that number and apparently used it to develop a solution to the squaring the circle problem that had plagued mathematicians for centuries.

The thing that most interested me was that the Indiana legislature took up the matter based almost entirely on Dr. Goodwin's say-so. The Indiana House passed it unanimously even though many members -- including the representative who introduced the bill -- freely admitted they had no idea what it was talking about. Before the Indiana Senate took up the matter, an actual professor of mathematics cornered a few of them and coached them on how to speak out against Goodwin's idea. The Senate voted against the bill, even though those who opposed it also were clear they didn't really know what it was talking about and were more concerned with the fact that its subject wasn't a proper one for the legislature's time and people in big cities were making fun of them.

In other words, we have a bill that J. Random Eccentric manages to talk his state legislator into introducing even though that legislator has no idea what it's about or what impact it might have. Because it seems harmless, an entire house of legislators passes it. Then in the other house, another guy coaches legislators what to say about the bill even though they also don't know what they're talking about and they vote based on what they're coached to say and what their public image looks like.

The more things change...