Americans are more fat so they need bigger Pi to keep geometry in touch with reality.
this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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(11 replies)
It's probably trying to teach kids algebra without using decimals. But it does look messed up. Everyone knows at least 3.14, except kids I guess
I got my daughter to memorize 50 digits of pi when she was 11 or 12 by betting her $50 she couldn’t.
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I'm fine with 3, maybe 4, but 5????
Everyone knows at least 3.14
And biblical authors.
In Terry Pratchett's wonderfully witty Discworld novel, Going Postal, the topic of pi comes up in a rather humorous and characteristically Pratchettian way.
The newly appointed Postmaster General, Moist von Lipwig, encounters a rather eccentric inventor named Bloody Stupid Johnson. Bloody Stupid Johnson is known for his, well, stupidly brilliant inventions. One of these inventions is a new kind of postal sorting engine.
When discussing the design of a wheel for this engine, Bloody Stupid Johnson proudly states that he designed it so that pi is exactly three.
This is in contrast with how pi is otherwise consistently expressed on the Disc, which is "three and a bit."
Notably, Bloody Stupid Johnson is so skilled/inept that he actually does make pi equal to three within the machine... somehow... which breaks reality in a small amount of space inside it.
Apparently King David had this skill as well, since this is mentioned twice in the old testament:
1 Kings 7:23: And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
Clearly π was equal to 3 in old testament times, but geometry got all screwy when Jesus died for our sines.
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(6 replies)
Assigning a value of 5 to pi, although ludicrous IRL, doesn't affect the problem. Plug the values into the equation and it will still give an answer that's correct in context.
I wish they would have used 22/7 for pi and 7 for the radius or height
For the benefit of doubt, maybe the test is from an alternate dimension that doesn't use euclidean space.
I've been there, I think, but it was really difficult to triangulate my location and confirm
That's because you were supposed to rhombusulate, not triangulate.
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If the goal is to avoid calculations with decimal places, why not just leave Pi in the result?
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Bye, bye, miss American PI.
Maybe Vader some day later, but now it's just about prime.
What kind of problem gives you the formula and all variable to replace? At this point, why not just write 5•10²•10=?
Intro to algebra type stuff to make sure you understand the concept of variables in the first place
Pi= 5 in this teachers reality. Circles must look wonky.
It makes it easy to do the math in your head without a calculator. But still , just tossing out pi=5 is not the way to go about creating these problems.
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Even then, I would want them to leave π in the problem itself. That would be much better for this exercise - teaching that you report “exact” values with π still in them.
Eg, if I rewrote this problem, I would expect an answer of 1000π.
Cause reading comprehension is part of the test. Lots of kids will be able to solve that equation, but there's a bunch who can't understand it if it's presented this way.
Honestly here they should have done "round pi to two decimal places" or smth.
One written in Comic fucking Sans
It’s clearly just saying that the surfaces on which the ends of the cylinder lie are metric spaces with distances defined using Chebyshev or Taxicab metrics based on pentagonal tilings of the parabolic plane so the ratio of a circle’s circumference to diameter is 5.
Since it’s a cylinder we assume the vertical dimension is Euclidean and voila the math checks out geometrically.
This was written by an engineer. They rounded up to 5 for the safety factor.
It's official, the observable universe is ~3 times larger!
Calculator not allowed test probably
Even if so, the other factors are both 10. How hard can it be...
3.14 would be easy enough to solve this one. r^2*h resolves to 1000, so V would be 3140.
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Ha Ha, non-Euclidian geometry go brr. :)
This is how you develop trust issues.
Ah yes, all those imperial units...
Think of the Loch Ness Monster and use tree fiddy and you're much closer
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