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Pi: A Source Book pp 236–239Cite as

The Legal Values of Pi

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Abstract

I have long been interested in the notorious attempt to legislate a legal value of π. I have read several articles [2,5,6,7,8,10] on the history of this attempt and it has been mentioned in the popular press recently [1,9]. From these it is clear that only Greenblatt [5] and Hallerberg [7] have tried to understand the obscure content of the proposed bill. Greenblatt found four different values of π given in it! Hallerberg has tried to understand how some of the values came about.

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References

  1. Anon. (1983) Reciting to the point of boredom. The Guardian (3 Nov.), 1

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  2. W. E. Edington (1935) House Bill No. 246, Indiana State Legislature, 1897. Proc. Indiana Acad. Sci., 45, 206–210

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  3. E. J. Goodwin (1894) Quadrature of the circle. Amer. Math. Month., 1, 246–247

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  4. E. J. Goodwin (1895) (A) The trisection of an angle; (B) Duplication of the cube. Amer. Math. Month., 2, 337

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  5. M. H. Greenblatt (1965) The “legal” value of Tr, and some related mathematical anomalies. American Scientist (Dec.), 427A–434A

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  6. A. E. Hallerberg (1975) House Bill No. 246 revisited. Proc. Indiana Acad. Sci., 84, 374–399

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  7. A. E. Hallerberg (1977) Indiana’s squared circle. Matit. Mag., 50, 136–140

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  8. T. F. Holgate (1935) Rules for making pi digestible. The Atlantic Monthly (July), 118–119

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  9. R. Millington (1982) Letter: The House divided and got a zero answer. The Guardian (8 Nov.)

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  10. C. A. Waldo (1916) What might have been. Proc. Indiana Acad. Sci., 26, 445–446

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polytechnic of the South Bank, London, SE1 0AA, England

    David Singmaster

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  1. David Singmaster
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© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Singmaster, D. (2000). The Legal Values of Pi. In: Pi: A Source Book. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3240-5_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3240-5_27

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-3242-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-3240-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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