On Saturday, May 10, 2003, at 13:36 America/Denver, R. William Gosper wrote:
PS, this lets me squeeze in one more math howler: "Find the area of a circle of radius 30cm. Round to the nearest tenth. Use pi = 3.14 ." It may not have been exactly 30, but they wanted five significant figures from a three digit value of pi! I forgot to ask if kids who used better values of pi got marked off.
Mention of a circle of thirty something-or-others reminded me of the famous passage in II Chronicles 4:2 (also 1 Kings 7:23 (KJV)): 4:2 Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. Ergo pi = 3. But at least he has D = 2*R right. It is probably urban legend that bills have been introduced in one or another benighted state legislature to insure that pi is taught to be three to the kiddies thereof (one of the Benighted States of America? where all wheels are hexagonal).