Alabama legislature and pi

Date: 04/15/98 at 17:17:44
From: Roger M. Dell
Subject: Alabama legislature and pi

Did the Alabama legislature really vote that pi should have its 
biblical value of 3? Also, I heard that the governor signed the bill 
into law.

Date: 04/15/98 at 19:06:54
From: Doctor Wilkinson
Subject: Re: Alabama legislature and pi

No, this appears to be quite untrue, a myth. This is a matter about 
which a great deal of misinformation has been bandied about:

  http://www.nmsr.org/alabama.htm

Various legislatures get the credit in different versions of the 
story, but the one that came closest was Indiana's. There was no 
attempt to legislate a value of 3, however. The real story seems to 
have gotten muddled, perhaps by the example of the Scopes trial 
(Tennessee is frequently mentioned as the culprit).  

Here's a Web page that tells the real story:

  http://db.uwaterloo.ca/~alopez-o/math-faq/node45.html   

-Doctor Wilkinson,  The Math Forum
 http://mathforum.org/dr.math/