Fun talk:Pi

From RationalWiki

Blast. I messed that up. The Indiana thing. My wife is calling me to bed. Lucky I know. Can anybody fix it? --Bob_M (talk) 16:12, 19 June 2007 (CDT)

I think I may have already fixed it. Good night, and thanks for the heads-up! human^{be in} 22:21, 19 June 2007 (CDT)

From the article:

"Is it really a number though, or is it a variable that represents a number?"

As I commented, it is not a variable, it is a number. Like 2 is a number. 2 is the symbol for , you know, 1+1. Pi is the symbol for the exact (irrational, etc.) number that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, which is a constant. In our world, anyway. In YEC-land, it probably had to change value rapidly around 5900 years ago in order to make the big bang look like it happened. Pi started as 1 and has been climbing ever since! human^{be in} 14:25, 20 June 2007 (CDT)

According to YECs, pi is the perimeter of a square divided by the length of the side, given the earth might as well be a vast plane.--PalMD^{-yada yada} 14:36, 20 June 2007 (CDT)

[edit] 1,000,000

Can we move the million digits thing to its own article? human^{be in} 16:10, 30 July 2007 (CDT)

You got it. YB ^indeed! 01:33, 1 August 2007 (CDT)

Awesome, thanks! human^{be in} 12:09, 1 August 2007 (CDT)

[edit] Subject/headline

"We can safely assume that if I Kings had said the pot was ten cubits across and just a teeny bit less than three hundred and fifty five one-hundred-thirteenths of a cubit around, they wouldn't have." Wouldn't have what? What does this mean?

Also, there's no reason it *has* to be a fundamentalist who makes an explanation (and I don't see what's so wrong with the word explanation, either). I'm not a fundamentalist Christian, and I came to the same conclusion. Lurker 01:11, 25 February 2008 (EST)

But what is the matter with it the way it is written? This is, after all, a "fun" article. And it was fundies who tried to legislate pi=3 in the section above. As far as the first thing you brought up, I'm torn on it - there is some funny in there (IE, if they got pi almost right at 355/113, wouldn't that be cool). I think the writer meant they "wouldn't have had to rationalize the gross error.". But let's try to get this worked out here, I can't remember who added those two sections, they just need work. (What was the conclusion? That the Bible can't be used as an engineering text?) human ^woo 01:29, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Whatevs you can use the adjectives of your choice, so long's I've gone on record against :)

Eleland was the editor, and I'm not sure what he (yes, I'm assuming it's a he, so sue me) meant. I get the 355/113 thing, except that for it to be correct it should be 10*255/113, because it's the circumference. I'm just generally confused. What I assume it means is "if the Bible got pi right then fundies wouldn't need to rationalize why pi is wrong in the Bible", which is a bit of a no-brainer. Also, we should probably say 355 portions of 113 divisions, or some such, because I, like you, was hella confused the first pi or so readings of the text. Lurker 02:06, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Yes, I went and read the "apologetics" at AIG, and you're right about the 10* thing of course. I think we should just ax the second paragraph since it tries hard but, sadly, phails. It doesn't really add anything to the article. human^{itarian aid} 14:58, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Copied here for posterity:

In fairness, fundamentalist Christians have come up with some fairly ingenious rationalizations for this.[1] We can safely assume that if I Kings had said the pot was ten cubits across and just a teeny bit less than three hundred and fifty five one-hundred-thirteenths of a cubit around, they wouldn't have had to.

human ^{be in} 15:01, 25 February 2008 (EST)

(outdent) Sorry, it wasn't the clearest writing. My point was this: Fundies have rationalized why I Kings isn't really defining pi as 3, because real geometers and scientists have gone and proved that pi = 3.1415926536... But, if I Kings had given a surprisingly accurate value for pi, they would not have rationalized it - instead, they would have trumpeted it as proof of the infallibility of God and the Bible. <eleland/talkedits> 03:55, 26 February 2008 (EST)

That's ok. That's why I preserved it, in case we can make a useful chunk out of it one day. I get your point, of course. Actually, non-literalists (and even I, an atheist), can easily see that the numbers are just rough, to show how big the darn thing was. It's like comparing foreign country sizes (or regions) to US states, as if USAians really know how big most of the states are. And, if the dimensions had been more accurate, I think it would simply be ignored. Attackers of literalism bring it up, so the apologists had to say something. Though, yah, I guess if it was accurate, it would have been in my homskollar textbook (see Biblical scientific foreknowledge). human ^thoughts 14:50, 26 February 2008 (EST)

By the way, there may be a better place to introduce this issue, perhaps in some article on literalism or apologia? human ^random 14:52, 26 February 2008 (EST)

If we are to apply scientific standards of accuracy to the bible, we might as well go all the way. After all, if it's circumference is 30.5 cubits, and it's diameter is 9.5 cubits we get a value for pi of around 3.21, therefore it might be very reasonable to just put this down under rounding errors. After all, scientists are allowed to round things, why wouldn't the bible be? InaVegt 12:02, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

The one tiny quibble with that argument is that scientists state what the rounding off is as part of their lab report. For instance, in college physics, measuring g with a pendulum and stopwatch, my "team" couldn't measure accurately enough to keep more than one digit in the result, so our answer was g = 1 * 10^1. The lack of decimal point and a zero to the right of it shows we only had one significant digit, by convention. The lab report explained why. If we had said g = 1.0 * 10^1 we would have been wrong. ħuman ^sap 14:48, 20 October 2008 (EDT)

I was told in my physics and chemistry classes that if you have something akin to '30*10^0', you can leave the '*10^0' out. In this case, I translated the text numbers literally to digital numbers, which both have two significant digits. I then applied standard margin of error to both, to show that 3.14 is within the standard margin of error of 30/10, or somewhat more scientific, (30*10^0)/(10*10^0). If someone claims the radius of the earth is 6 Mm and the circumference is 40 Mm (Both of which are true, albeit rounded) are you going to say he claims pi equals 3+1/3 as well? InaVegt 15:14, 20 October 2008 (EDT)