Just about everyone who remembers their schooling can recall pi to a couple of places (3.14159......) In reality, though, as an irrational number it never ends and never settles into a repeating pattern. (if you have the time you can see the first million digits of pi here) I say in reality, but there was an attempt to define it and stop all the messiness with lots of decimal places and make a law to replace it with 3.2 - much tidier, but just the slight drawback of being mathematically incorrect!
In 1897 the general assembly of the state of Indiana was persuaded by a Doctor by the name of Edwin J Goodwin to consider his idea that Pi was not this messy irrational number but 3.2. As well as producing an incorrect calculation of pi, Mr Goodwin graciously said that schools in Indiana could use his idea free of charge and the state could even share the royalties when he sold his idea to to schools in other states. All the state had to do to share this windfall was make pi=3.2 the law of the state. After being bounced around various committees including the committee on swamp lands (the mind boggles) the bill was passed without any objections.
So, the bill went up to the state senate for ratification where after its first reading it was sent to the committee on temperance to study the detail and also gave it the thumbs up. (Politicians on a temperance committee believing dodgy maths, that's a first!) To the good fortune of the state's school children a professor of mathematics happened to be in the state capitol on other business and was shown the bill. The good professor took it upon himself to teach the state senators some elementary mathematics and the state senate decided to indefinitely postpone the bill. So,somewhere in some dusty filing cabinet there is still a bill marked pending just waiting for the next set of politicians who think they can legislate for mathematical truth!
The moral of the story? Well, lets leave that to Neil Degrasse Tyson
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