Dover Math Teachers Required to Offer 'Alternative Value' for Pi

[BlueEyedSon]

DOVER, Pennsylvania - The Dover school board has raised eyebrows and ire across Pennsylvania and the country after requiring math teachers to offer 3 as an acceptable value of Pi. Pi is the name given to the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, commonly accepted to be 3.141592, though the actual number is believed to go on endlessly, without repeating. "That's all well and good," said Maureen Callister, Dover school board member, "But what about God? Doesn't he have a say?" Callister cited the Bible, First Kings chapter 7, verse 23, where it says, "He proceeded to make the molten sea ten cubits from its brim to its other brim, <...> and it took a line of thirty cubits to circle all around it." "If 3 is a good enough 'pi' for the Almighty, then it ought to be good enough for us," stated Callister.

http://www.thebentinel.com/041201-alternative-value-for-pi.html

:evilgrin:

[fshrink]

1. Why, of course!

I'm telling you people, there's only one thing that will get those cockroaches back in the woodwork, and give them an incentive to calm down and freaking learn. And that is popular pressure. The more it goes, the more I think that Marx was exactly on target. What he called "the dictatorship of the proletariat", which had nothing to do with the leninist/stalinist bureaucratic power that evolved from the concept as a gravely premature baby, seems to be brewing. The tension between mere reason and plain delusion is rushing towards a threshold. The bow is so tense that it becomes crystal.

[Longhorn]

2. "Whoever uses this stuff after school anyway?"

What an absolute idiot! I've never heard anything so stupid in my life!

[fshrink]

3. Jeeez Bevo! You must feel lonely down there! nt

[gottaB]

4. say it isn't so

this is effing insane

[BlueEyedSon]

5. I think it's a parody....

[gottaB]

6. got me

I just browsed through the front page

[Longhorn]

7. Okay, you got me!

But it isn't that far-fetched, is it?

Since I'm a math teacher, I'm always having to explain to my students why they have to learn it so that article really pushed my buttons!

Shame on you! :spank:

[Philostopher]

8. Great site!

I need to bookmark that one and send it to the Mr. -- we loves us some parody.

I might have been more likely to fall for that one if it had been 'Kansas' or 'Mississippi' than Pennsylvania, I guess. Of course, Ohio is where the God-botherers want their junk science creationism clone taught next to natural selection, so maybe it would have been even more convincing if it had said Ohio!

[FM Arouet666]

9. Thats it I am moving....

I am feeling very anti-religious tonight and just had a diatribe about the dumbing down of Americans. When will this religious nonsense end? Human existence has improved because of scientific discovery not because of the lard. Chanting supplications to your lard jesus is not a valid method to explore the physical world. Didn't work two thousand years ago and does not work today. Lets get rid of Pi, evolution, stem cell research, etc My only hope is that Ms Callister is driving in a vehicle or flying in a plane which has a critical part constructed using 3 as the value of pi.

[fshrink]

10. I would suggest Ferney-Voltaire...

Very funny your critical part thing...