From dog.ee.lbl.gov!ucbvax!cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!utgpu!utzoo!sq!msb Wed Aug  7 09:26:16 PDT 1991
Article 20993 of alt.folklore.urban:
Path: dog.ee.lbl.gov!ucbvax!cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!utgpu!utzoo!sq!msb
>From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Krazy Laws
Message-ID: <1991Aug7.022409.25157@sq.sq.com>
Date: 7 Aug 91 02:24:09 GMT
References: <2495@diemen.utas.edu.au>
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 81

> I read somewhere that a law was passed in Kansas making the official value of
> pi (usually 3.141.....) an even 3.

Sheesh.  Doesn't *anyone* read news.announce.newusers any more?
>From the Usenet FAQ list:

| 21.  Didn't some state once pass a law setting pi equal to 3 ?
| 
|      Indiana House Bill #246 was introduced on 18 January 1897, and
|      referred to the Committee on Canals "midst general cheerfulness."
|      The text states, "the ratio of the diameter and circumference is
|      as five-fourths to four", which makes pi 3.2 (not 3), but there
|      are internal contradictions in the bill as well as contradictions
|      with reality.  The author was a mathematical crank.  The bill was
|      passed by the state House on 5 February, but indefinitely tabled
|      by the state Senate, in part thanks to the fortuitous presence
|      on other business of a Purdue professor of mathematics.
| 
|      For details, including an annotated text of the bill, read the
|      article by D. Singmaster in "The Mathematical Intelligencer" v7
|      #2, pp 69-72.

I have a couple of long articles online giving some of the history of
the bill and an interpretation of what the author appears to have been
thinking; but here is the full text of the bill for what it is worth.
I'll send the articles to anyone who asks for them in email, but I
don't think they'd be of great interest here.

#  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.
#  
#  SECTION 1.  Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of
#  Indiana: It has been found that a circular area is to the square
#  on a line equal to the quadrant of the circumference, as the area
#  of an equilateral rectangle is to the square on one side.  The
#  diameter employed as the linear unit according to the present rule
#  in computing the circle's area is entirely wrong, as it represents
#  the circle's area one and one-fifth times the area of a square
#  whose perimeter is equal to the circumference of the circle.  This
#  is because one-fifth of the diameter fails to be represented four
#  times in the circle's circumference.  For example: if we multiply
#  the perimeter of a square by one-fourth of any line one-fifth
#  greater than one side, we can in like manner make the square's area
#  to appear one fifth greater than the fact, as is done by taking
#  the diameter for the linear unit instead of the quadrant of the
#  circle's circumference.
#  
#  SECTION 2.  It is impossible to compute the area of a circle on
#  the diameter as the linear unit without tresspassing upon the area
#  outside the circle to the extent of including one-fifth more area
#  than is contained within the circle's circumference, because the
#  square on the diameter produces the side of a square which equals
#  nine when the arc of ninety degrees equals eight.  By taking the
#  quadrant of the circle's circumference for the linear unit, we
#  fulfill the requirements of both quadrature and rectification of
#  the circle's circumference.  Furthermore, it has revealed the ratio
#  of the chord and arc of ninety degrees, which is as seven to eight,
#  and also the ratio of the diagonal and one side of a square which
#  is as ten to seven, disclosing the fourth important fact, that the
#  ratio of the diameter and circumference is as five-fourths to four;
#  and because of these facts and the futher fact that the rule in
#  present use fails to work both ways mathematically, it should be
#  discarded as wholly wanting and misleading in its practical
#  applications.
#  
#  SECTION 3.  In further proof of the value of the author's proposed
#  contribution to education, and offered as a gift to the State of
#  Indiana, is the fact of his solutions of the trisection of the
#  angle, duplication of the cube and quadrature of the circle having
#  been already accepted as contributions to science by the American
#  Mathematical Monthly, the leading exponent of mathematical thought
#  in this country.  And be it remembered that these noted problems
#  had been long since given up by scientific bodies as unsolvable
#  mysteries and above man's ability to comprehend.
-- 
Mark Brader             "'Settlor', (i) in relation to a testamentary trust,
Toronto                  means the individual referred to in paragraph (i)."
utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com                -- Income Tax Act of Canada, 108(1)(h)