In Terry Pratchett’s wonderfully witty Discworld novel, Going Postal, the topic of pi comes up in a rather humorous and characteristically Pratchettian way.
The newly appointed Postmaster General, Moist von Lipwig, encounters a rather eccentric inventor named Bloody Stupid Johnson. Bloody Stupid Johnson is known for his, well, stupidly brilliant inventions. One of these inventions is a new kind of postal sorting engine.
When discussing the design of a wheel for this engine, Bloody Stupid Johnson proudly states that he designed it so that pi is exactly three.
This is in contrast with how pi is otherwise consistently expressed on the Disc, which is “three and a bit.”
Notably, Bloody Stupid Johnson is so skilled/inept that he actually does make pi equal to three within the machine… somehow… which breaks reality in a small amount of space inside it.
Apparently King David had this skill as well, since this is mentioned twice in the old testament:
1 Kings 7:23:
And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
It’s probably trying to teach kids algebra without using decimals. But it does look messed up. Everyone knows at least 3.14, except kids I guess
My dad told me a rhyme to memorize like 15 digits of pi before I knew what pi is at like eight years old I’m guestimating. I remember it ever since.
… Yet refuses to share it with the world!
It’s in a different language.
I don’t understand. Aren’t fractions better than decimals for algerba?
Like 22/7 is better than 3.14 when it comes to pi for example.
We always got taught to do everything as fractions and then convert to units at the last possible moment to reduce errors in rounding.
Kiddos would need to know how to divide for that though. I’m just trying to come up with a reason for it lol.
I got my daughter to memorize 50 digits of pi when she was 11 or 12 by betting her $50 she couldn’t.
My 7-year-old got obsessed and did it from a YouTube video to 100 places because he was bored.
He also knows base 2 to 65536
My buddy in high school had it memorized it to 700+ digits. He was bored.
I’ll remember that, but she is four now…
I’m goons gonna try it with my 7yo. I’ll report back if he gets anywhere. On the plus side $10 should be enough incentive.
Von nichts kommt nichts. Also los.
I’m fine with 3, maybe 4, but 5???
And biblical authors.
In Terry Pratchett’s wonderfully witty Discworld novel, Going Postal, the topic of pi comes up in a rather humorous and characteristically Pratchettian way.
The newly appointed Postmaster General, Moist von Lipwig, encounters a rather eccentric inventor named Bloody Stupid Johnson. Bloody Stupid Johnson is known for his, well, stupidly brilliant inventions. One of these inventions is a new kind of postal sorting engine.
When discussing the design of a wheel for this engine, Bloody Stupid Johnson proudly states that he designed it so that pi is exactly three.
This is in contrast with how pi is otherwise consistently expressed on the Disc, which is “three and a bit.”
Notably, Bloody Stupid Johnson is so skilled/inept that he actually does make pi equal to three within the machine… somehow… which breaks reality in a small amount of space inside it.
Apparently King David had this skill as well, since this is mentioned twice in the old testament:
Clearly π was equal to 3 in old testament times, but geometry got all screwy when Jesus died for our sines.
might also be to teach actually reading the instructions instead of blindly typing pi into the calculator