The wife chewed out her husband at the company picnic awhile back.
“Doesn’t it embarrass you that people have seen you go up to the buffet table five times?”
“Not a bit,” the husband replied. “I just tell them I’m filling up the plate for you!”
Indiana Pi LawIn 1897, the Indiana State House legislature passed Bill No.246 which in effect gave 3.2 exactly as the value of pi. It stated, in part, "the ratio of the diameter and circumference [pi] is as five-fourths to four." That is (4 divided by 5/4) = 16/5 = 3.2 exactly. It was introduced by Representative Taylor I. Record, a farmer and lumber merchant, on behalf of a mathematical hobbyist, Dr. Edwin J. Goodwin, M.D. Neither they, nor the House politicians, understood it was mathematically incorrect. That was shortly recognized by Clarence A. Waldo, mathematics professor at Purdue University, who advised the Indiana Senators. They indefinitely postponed the bill on 12 Feb 1897. Pi is, in fact, an irrational number, approx. 3.141592.« |
