Pi is a really cool number. It’s irrational, like humans and it’s everywhere, like humans. ;) [And I feel geekier than ever.]

Have you ever seen the Darren Aronofsky movie “Pi“? If not, you should, it’s really cool. But then, what Aronofsky movie isn’t?

And Pi is probably the only number with it’s own day, March 14, of course.

People were always trying to square the circle. But [quote wiki]:

In 1882, the task was proven to be impossible, as a consequence of the fact that pi (π) is a transcendental, rather than algebraic irrational number; that is, it is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients.
[If you don’t understand that, don’t ask me, I don’t really either. I can just grasp the gist: It’s not possible.]

And now we get to the Indiana Pi Bill.

In 1897, a physician and amateur mathematician called Edwin J. Goodwin (a wonderful name) approached a House Representative, Taylor I. Record and told him that he found a way to square the circle. Record proceeded to introduce “A Bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth and offered as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying any royalties whatever on the same, provided it is accepted and adopted by the official action of the Legislature of 1897″.

Well, in this bill, Goodwin claimed to have found solutions for several mathematical problems deemed impossible before like the trisection of the angle, the doubling of the cube and the quadrature of the circle [which is the same thing as squaring the circle].

After some shoving around, the bill was almost passed unanimously, when a math professor, Clarence A. Waldo, turned up coincidentally, took a look at the bill and saved Indiana from a lot of stupidity.

Although the bill never mentions pi explicitly, in one paragraph it claims more or less that pi was 4/1.25, which is 3.2.

Another proof that science should not be established through laws… especially by people who really don’t know what their talking about.