16 Nov
1995
16 Nov
'95
5:04 p.m.
Actually, the (original) explanation is correct. The state was Indiana. Read about it in Petr Beckmann's "History of Pi" if you're interested about it. I believe it has the full story.
It was a small community in Alabama that voted (for their town) to allow PI to equal 3 for the purpose of calculating square footage for property tax.
That's it. No grand scheme to defraud Southern schoolkids, no legislation of ip_v !=4, just something to make taxes simple.
They also passed a bill once to make PI 3 or some such, didn't they?
In the state where this happened it was passed by their congress but was vetoed in their senate so it never became law.