Talk:Indiana pi bill

message: There are so many online accounts of the Pi Bill that characterise its text as being completely self-contradictory that I'm sorely tempted to write a sentence-by-sentence breakdown of the bill, showing how all of it is derived from a relatively small number of initial fallacies. But that would be original research, and perhaps even what I've written in the article so far is on the wrong side of WP:OR. Henning Makholm 00:36, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know, it's pretty good to see a semi-definative work on exactly what this all was about, considering how many WILDLY differing versions of it there are. 68.39.174.238 06:21, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Breakdown

message: User:Father Goose said in an edit summary: every reference I can find that isn't derived from Wikipedia's work gives the name as Edwin Goodwin, not Edward.
I have no idea what he was actually called, but one pre-Wikipedia reference that does say Edward is the The Straight Dope writeup mentioned among the external link. Even it, however, ackowledges that other sources say Edwin. The middle initial J does not appear to be in doubt; it is also given by some sources that say Edwin. –Henning Makholm 19:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Alas, my main source, Underwood Dudley's wonderful book Mathematical Cranks, just uses the first initial. No help there. - DavidWBrooks 20:15, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Goodwin's first name 

message: "One argument used was that Goodwin had copyrighted his discovery, and proposed to let the State use it in the public schools for free."
:From what I can see, the relevant copyright law was the Copyright Act of 1790 and AFAIK, even back then, just like today, you couldn't "copyright a discovery" or mathematical proof so the sentence seems a bit odd to me. I also don't see how this sentence fits in with the sentence before it. It's out of context - why does him letting the state use it in public schools for free (after he supposedly copyrighted it) serve as an argument favoring the law? Yonatan talk 17:01, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarification needed

message: IMNSHO, this article would be greatly enhanced by a second figure showing the ACTUAL values of "7" and "8" (I calculate "8" to be ~ 7.854). As a suggestion. --Grndrush (talk) 12:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: If you have an image like that, please feel free to add it to the article. Charles Edward (Talk) 14:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggested Enhancement

message: The article doesn't make it clear why, given that they believed it to be true, the legislators wanted to enact this as a bill. Usually math isn't written into law, right? -- 92.229.181.211 (talk) 07:44, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The title of the bill explains the possible legislative component: "... and offered as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying any royalties whatever". It was a bunch of hooey, so don't expect an overly sensible reason. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:35, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why a bill? 

message: Being also from Indiana, I recorded the following posting in the RISKS forum in 1994.     --FrederickNoelChase (talk) 18:12, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  An Apparently-Informed Rendition, Text of the Bill, and Names of Informed Individuals 

message: I moved text that was added which mentioned a reference made to the bill by a Catholic priest in New Zealand in the context of gay marriage laws. It certainly does not belong in the Lede section, but it's questionable whether it even belongs in the article at all. Discussion? — Loadmaster (talk) 01:34, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: No, it belongs in the story because it's an example of this issue existing "in the wild" so to speak and thus gives the reader some idea of the importance of the issue. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:54, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: The Indiana Pi Bill has quite a presence in contemporary culture, and this article actually understates it.  Seems to need fleshing out.  BTW, I remember it from my 6th grade math textbook (many years ago) - but it would be difficult to locate cites to that or similar textbooks. Huangdi (talk) 02:14, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The hard part, of course, is getting usable references. As we all know, people's memories are unreliable and not enough in themselves for an article. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 13:36, 13 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  In popular culture 

message: I've come across one or two statements to the effect that Indiana defined π to be 4.  One of these is The World's Stupidest Laws (Michael O'Mara Books); I've also a recollection of the Guinness Book of Records many years ago stating it as the most inaccurate value claimed for π; it was probably referring to this bill but I'm not sure.  A quick Google search reveals a few references to this value in the first two pages of results.
It seems to me that the claim that π = 4 ought to be at least mentioned in the article.  But can we find suitable sources? — Smjg (talk) 22:44, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: No specific value of  is contained in the bill. David Singmaster claimed that by following the algorithms implied in the bill several different values of  would be calculated, none of them even approximately correct. Bill Cherowitzo  (talk) 02:29, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

text: The section of the article on the area of a circle brings up the value of 4 as a misinterpretation of the contents of the bill. That is probably more than enough than this factoid deserves. Bill Cherowitzo  (talk) 02:37, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh yes, I don't know how I managed to miss that.  The square of a quarter of the circumference would be \frac{\pi^2r^2}{4}, so it would be a correct formula for the area of a circle only if π were equal to 4. — Smjg (talk) 17:58, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about the value 4? 

message: I have just hidden the infobox after having already reverted it and having it replaced. The claim was that it was a work in progress and I shouldn't have reverted it. I have two comments, the first a technical one. The box was poorly formed and contained incorrect information, claiming that the legislation was passed three years before the assembly was in session and that the date enacted was–wait for it–Goodwin ???? Things like this should not appear in public spaces and should be worked on in a sandbox until it is correct and ready to be viewed. I could have corrected the errors, but that brings me to my second and more significant comment. Infoboxes are not suitable for all articles. When they work well they provide essential information at a glance that conveys important aspects of the article. On the other hand, this is not always possible (see the essay Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes). In this particular case, the only information that would appear in the box is trivia surrounding the issue. What makes this topic notable is not the legislation, but the fact that this legislation was even considered in the first place and an infobox is not going to be able to convey that notability. In my original revert I had called this infobox "useless" and I stand by that assessment.--Bill Cherowitzo  (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with your latter point; this is not the sort of article that needs an infobox - it's repetitive clutter, at best. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:16, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: There is legislative history in the article can be more easily tracked using an infobox, for instance see Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that shows the bill passing through the various branches of Congress.--Prisencolin (talk) 17:23, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The history isn't long enough to justify an infobox, especially since it didn't even pass into law. The text is more than sufficient, I'd say. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:31, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It actually passed in the House but was tabled in the senate. Seems like enough history to need to be listed in a chronological infobox.--Prisencolin (talk) 02:45, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

text: I agree - it serves no purpose, adds no information or format that isn't available in the article, and may confuse readers. Remove it. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:17, 7 October 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody else stepped up to support the infobox, so I'm hiding it again. It's a distraction, not a help to readers. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox