October 3, 2023 • 41 mins
Pi itself is pretty ridiculous. This number -- the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle -- appears to continue into infinity, with no predictable pattern. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore something even more ridiculous: that time in 1897 when an amateur mathematician named Edward J. Goodwin almost persuaded the state of Indiana to legally change the meaning of Pi. Tune in to hear how he would have got away with it, were it not for the accidental intervention of another guy who just happened to be in the room.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. It's us back from Las Vegas with stories
to tell. Shout out to our main man, super producer,
mister Max Williams. Max, what I think it's the right
and ethical thing for Nola and I to assure you
(00:48):
that you missed absolutely nothing in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm ben you were damn But you guys know what,
while y'all were in Vegas, I was learning about math.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
It was probably some math that we could have put
to use to game those poker machines, which is definitely
a thing that you can do.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, you got to figure out of them, that's right.
No true story.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I went to this local bar in the Arts district
and was standing in line for the bathroom and there
are these two older gentlemen who were talking about gambling machines,
and one of them said that a friend of his
actually designs the machines, and that even he has no
way of gaming the system because the system is designed
to game you.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
That's true. We have an episode on stuff they don't
want you to know coming out called stuff casinos don't
want you to know. Pay attention to that. It's a
live show, and you'll also hear a show we did
about Labor Day, also live in Vegas, with some help
from our friends at Bow's. It was a weird time.
Max I won. I didn't win a lot of money,
(01:54):
but a guy named Greg won a lot of money.
And that's a story for off air. It's it's the
true story. It's a weird one. But to your point,
Nol one of my very good friends in my old
sketch comedy group, or No. One of my old improv teams,
his day job is designing slot machines, video slot machines,
(02:16):
and he's in just the same situation as that stranger's friend.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
At the bar.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It's it's very much a black box when you get
to that random number generation on the slots.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I actually won big on one hit first twenty bucks
I put into a machine. I won one thousand dollars
and I still ended up two hundred dollars down overall Vegas. Baby,
it's the price of doing business.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Greg M. And oh I did find out Greg M
is a real person, Greg M. That's what we're just saying, M.
Greg m who I became for the entirety of our
trip there, received one hundred dollars credit from a casino
and then walked away with about seven hundred dollars minus
(03:03):
those egregious ATM fees.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So thanks Greg, you win, Greg wins. Greg will loses,
but Noel had a good time. Man learned a lot
about the nature of the human spirit, most of which
I learned from the Hoover Dam video, yes, which is.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Very much propaganda that reminds me of going to the
border of North Korea. That has nothing to do with
anything but today's story, courtesy of our research associate, mister
Max Williams, is about creative problem solving, or an attempt
to do so, thinking out of the box, saying, hey,
if there's some math I can't quite math, why don't
(03:40):
I change the rules of the game. And that is
where our story kind of begins. Let's get into pie day.
You guys know where nerds, fellow ridiculous historians. One of
our good friends, Tyler Klang, who keeps things running backstage,
has memorized pie I kid you not to an egregious
(04:02):
number of digits.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
That's a fun flex. I know it up to three
point one four, one five nine.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
I know up to three point one four.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I only know the one five nine because it's on
the research doct that I'm looking at right now.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And every year on March fourteenth, this might come up
because you may run into one of the people who
wants to have a pie flex. And I've seen people
go back and it's like a weird battle rap, which
I love, where they go back and forth naming the
digits of pie. It's also a road trip game. If
(04:37):
you are not fun an.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So every I mean, it depends on your definition of fun,
you'd be incredibly fixed all kinds. In math circles. You're
probably the bell of the ball. Pie has in fact
been calculated way beyond even what Tyler has memorized, up
to fifty trillion digits, a number that is incalculable to
(04:59):
the of this particular podcaster, and that's of course beyond
its decimal point.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It is a.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Transcendental number, which I had not heard that term used before.
I always associate that with more metaphysical pursuits and meditation
and all of that, but apparently numbers can transcend reality
as well, and it is also an irrational number. You
just can't talk to it. You know, it just insists
upon itself. It's so irrational.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It's one of the most fascinating mathematical phenomenon right because PI,
at its basis, is the ratio of the circumference of
a circle to its diameter. Now, most people will tell
you three point one, four, one, five nine is close
enough for government work. But this strange, distinct nature of
(05:50):
PI has captured the human mind for time immemorial. That's
why every day on March fourteenth, people celebrate Pie Day.
That's why, you know, like you said, there are a
lot of people who want to memorize or count out
every everything. That's why there's an excellent film called Pie.
It's a great date movie. Just trust us, don't read
(06:12):
these spoilers.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Tie again. Early first one drilled in their head like
a little.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
All Stars that It probably came out in the nineties,
like maybe ninety eight, ninety nine, something like that. But yeah,
it's also in really really gritty filmy black and white.
So in that scene that you're describing the splatter, it
just looks like black ink. It's pretty intense. It's a
really cool movie. It's Kabbala as well. It's there's like
(06:43):
a crossover of the math side. The main character as
a mathematician and he encounters this sect of almost like
a cult of Kabbala followers who are essentially searching for
like a sacred geometry something.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah, it's like it's almost a callback to Arthur C.
Clark's Nine Billion Names of God because they induct them.
They've got the teflin and all that stuff. And then
there's of course an evil corporate conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It's just great.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Ye. And here's the thing. Wild Pie is chaotic. While
it seems that there is no predictable repetition, let alone
an end to the digit, it is still very very
important because we need to understand circumferences of circles. This
(07:34):
is huge for space exploration. Like NASA pointed out, engineers
at their organization build spacecraft that make these elliptical orbits
and guzzle fuel from cylindrical fuel tanks and measure distance
on circular wheels.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
All of those are round things. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Another thing that comes up in the film Pie is
the idea of the golden ratio and a lot of
these things that sort of appear in Native Sure, it
would appear that Pie is in some way a secret
of the universe.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, it might be, if you believe in reality as
a simulation, it might be some of the code used
to program resources.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So we're giving you that really quick background on pie
as a cultural phenomenon, as a as a mathematic fascination,
because it turns out, fellow ridiculous historians, that we are
not alone in our fascination and with with a little
(08:36):
bit of gumption and a lot of hutspa. Over in
Indiana back in the day, there was a guy who
thought he figured out pie.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, figured it out better than all the other science
types that have been doing it since antiquity, including folks
like Pythagoras, Archimedes of Syracuse, all the hits, you know.
And this fellow in Indiana was like, no, no, no,
I got this.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I think we think.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I think a change will do us good here in
the fine state of India.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
He had help, He had some divine intervention.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You could say, hey, wait, do you know the upcoming
stuff they don't want you to know? Episode?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Max, I don't, but I know this episode because I
wrote it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, Max, you wrote our research brief here and I
really enjoy some of the stuff you found about the
history of pie. We said time immemorial. For humans, that
means they knew about pie for about four thousand years.
And it keeps reminding me of some of my favorite
(09:49):
science fiction. Even if human civilization calculated the number of
seconds in four thousand years and calculated pie to the
number of seconds in four thousand years, we would still
not have the whole number. It would there would still
be another digit after that, and another after that, and
(10:12):
after that, and so for much of human history. Like
you mentioned, no Archimedes, Pythagoras, They're trying to calculate to
the best of their ability, and every single person ended
up eventually rounding up or rounding down and saying close enough.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Close to three.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
The ancient Babylonians calculated the area of a circle using
the formula of three times the square of its radius,
which gave that value of Pie equals three. On an
ancient Babylonian tablet circa nineteen hundred to sixteen eighty BCE,
it shows the value of three point one two five
(10:52):
for Pi, which is a bit closer to the modern
day approximation. Another ancient text, the Wrinned Papyrus circus sixteen
fifty BCE, shows a little bit more of a look
into the math of ancient Egypt, which was shockingly advanced.
(11:13):
The emptions were no slouches when it came to figure in.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
The pyramids might not look that impressive until you realize
how much math went into building them.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Oh, Ben, I watched a little bit when we got
back from our trip last night, just to kind of
mellow out Kunk on Earth, and oh and suggested it.
And there's a great line sort of in the beginning
when it's just doing like a clip show, kind of
showing what the show is going to be, where she's
talking to some expert on math or I believe history,
and say, so, why are people so confused about how
(11:47):
the pyramids were built? It's obviously just big bricks shaped
like a triangle.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, yeah, did you enjoy it?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
I enjoyed what I saw. I did pass out, but
I look for to revisiting it. It's a delight.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I will revisit it to a Fortunately, I had to
stay up all night, so I'm a little sleep deprived.
But hey, pie never ends, so why should we? And
then let's go to Archimedes just to flesh out the
background here, folks. So Archimedes of Syracuse, not the one
you're thinking of. He is one of the greatest mathematicians
(12:21):
of the ancient world. And so he tackled this the
way smart people always do. He looked around at precedents,
he asked questions, and eventually he said, look, I can
approximate the area of a circle if I use the
existing Pythagorean theorem to find the area of two regular polygons.
(12:44):
And it's like old Matroshkadal, right, there's a polygon inscribed
within the circle, and then there's a polygon outside of
the circle, And so he said, the actual area of
the circle is somewhere in there. So now if I
know how big the outside shape is and how big
(13:04):
the inside shape is, I know that the circumference of
the like the circle itself, the area of it is
somewhere in between there.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And shout out to Exploratorium dot edu, which is a
learning laboratory that you can visit in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
You can actually buy tickets.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Seems like a really cool place, a science museum and
has some really good information on their website, including a
brief history of PI. So as you can tell, this
stuff goes way way way back, involving some historical figures
who are way smarter than us, including back in ancient
China around four twenty nine to five oh one CE
(13:46):
the mathematician Zoo Chong Shei.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, Hutong she was brilliant. Is kind of the the
Chinese Archimedes. If you ignore the timeline, he would not
have known of Archimedes' clever method. Oh, by the way,
don't want to miss this, folks. Archimedes his process found
that pies between three and one seventh and three and
(14:11):
ten seventy one, so he got pretty close. Not bad dude,
and I had not been says to Archimedes. You know
a good hustle bro anyway, so our buddy shoe. He
calculates the value of the ratio of the circumference of
a circle to its diameter to be three fifty five
over one thirteen. And to compute this, he started with
(14:34):
the closest kind of polygon that could approximate a circle
and still had discernible sides. And then he did hundreds
and hundreds of weird calculations. Weird to me at least
of square roots carried out to nine decimal places. So
also good hustle shoe and then the letter. The letter
actually doesn't come around until the seventeen hundreds to represent
(14:57):
this concept.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yeah, and from the section that brief history of HIE article,
I learned that you can have a polygon is just
a kind of catch all for a shape that has sides.
And it refers to in this computation done by Shangxi
A two five hundred and seventy six gone, which is
a thing.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, it's from far enough away, it looks kind of
like a circle, almost like pixels, like you have to
like zoom in to kind of see the building blocks.
And now knowing all that, we are going to fast
forward Max, we get fast forward Q to a bit
(15:40):
more modern history. We're fast forwarding and we are making
this our Indiana state. Thank you, Max. Indiana calls itself
(16:01):
the Crossroads of America if you've ever been. It's a
nice place outside of Erie. It borders Lake Michigan, and
you know, and Max's home state of Michigan to the north,
Ohio's on the east, Kentucky's in the south, Illinois over
in the west. So this place is peak Midwest. Its story,
its modern story dates back to sixteen seventy nine when
(16:23):
according to our pals of Britannica, a guy named Renee
Ruleboat Cavilla has traveled from Boat down the Saint Joseph
River and arrived at northern Indiana and colonialism happened. It
was French for a little bit. In seventeen sixty three,
they gave it to England. I think his title even
(16:45):
goes a little further with us Sieur, which means lord
de la Salle, and that Crossroads of America, you know,
I guess is a sort of a nod to this
sort of exploration kind of history.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
So can I jump in here? This is something I
did not realize that other than Hawaii, it is the
smallest land massed state west of the Appalachians. That's weird.
I did not realize that.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
It doesn't. It doesn't look like it, right.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
It's not because it's not a small state.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
But that's aboutares and the caveat is the location of
the Appalachians, right or Appalachians. So yeah, the United States
found out they're going they were going to have a
lot more land once they got past the Appellations, and
then did a bunch of horrible things which we're about
to talk about.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
They manifested a destiny that is ethically fraught. So the
interesting thing happens on the way to England. When the
English forces take possession of what becomes Indiana, they prohibit
further European settlement. However, let's remember communication lines were not
(17:54):
super strong. It was very difficult to project force across
an ocean at that point, so every ignored this decree.
In seventeen seventy four, the English Parliament said, okay, we
are gonna annex the lands to Quebec. And then there's
this whole revolution, the peasant unpleasantness they call it in England,
(18:18):
and we call it the American Revolution. And during that time,
you know, everybody is scrambling to possess the land that
becomes called Indiana, Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, they're all in this.
And I don't know how deep we want to go
into the history, but what you need to know is
(18:38):
while all these European and colonial forces were batting the
ball back and forth, the European settlers were moving into
an area with a large, thriving indigenous population, and they
were doing terrible stuff. People don't always want to hear
that but it is the truth, and you can it's
(19:00):
so objectively true that you can find it in any
reputable history of Indiana, even just the general intrigue from
our friends at history dot.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Com m HM.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And that all resulted in the well, not resulted in,
but a big one, and we've mentioned this recently, was
the eighteen to eleven Battle of Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,
which was won by William Henry Harrison, who was a
general at the time and of course would go on
to become the President of the United States. And the
(19:31):
name Indiana, which it's pretty easy to make this connection
loosely translates to land of the Indians, but as we
also know, Indians is not a thing, right like they
Columbus was looking for the Indies and he did not
find them.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Sign not. Have you guys heard about the Native tribe
suing the Washington commanders telling them they need to change
their name back to not not Washington football team, whichever
agreads was the best one of the three, but to
the one before that.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So yeah, I heard, I heard there was a lawsuit. Interesting,
We'll have to see how that shakes out. Maybe once
it becomes history, we can we can tell that ridiculous story.
I mean, it does sound like we're you know, we're
going in a couple of different directions here, folks, But
(20:26):
hopefully they are helpful directions, because get this, the entire
time all that other stuff is happening, folks have no
idea about HI. I mean, they have no idea. They
haven't solved it. They don't know how it ends, they
don't know if it repeats. And that continues today. Now
and we fast forward, we meet They're in Indiana. A
(20:56):
mathematics professor Purdue University, his name Clarence Waldo, and Clarence
Waldo in February of eighteen ninety seven, shows up at
the Indiana State House and he's trying to lobby for
his school, for Purdue University. For everybody outside of the US,
lobbying is lobbying is the word we use for bribery.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
So when Waldo was hanging out in the state House
to push for those increases in school budgets, he witnessed
something that resonated with him. House built two forty six,
a measure intended to legally change the value of the
number Pi to three point two, and it passed its
third and final reading in the General Assembly's lower house,
(21:43):
and he is quoted as saying the following in response
to that event, imagine my surprise, and I discovered that
I was in the midst of a debate upon a
piece of mathematical legislation. After the vote was concluded, a
legislator walked over to Walder, who at the time was
also the president of the Indiana Academy of Science, and
suggested that he meet the man behind the bill, to
(22:06):
which the professor politely declined.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, and said, I'm already acquainted with as many crazy
people as I care to know. Shout out to an
absolutely non crazy guy, a ripping writer Nathan Gosh writing
for the Indiana Capitol Chronicle, who's giving us the ins
and outs of this story. The question is what's going on?
Why did this bill pop up? This is interesting to
(22:31):
Waldo because doctor Waldo is a mathematics professor, and that's
when he learns about the crazy quote unquote crazy guy
the legislators referring to Edwin Goodwin. Edwin Goodwin is a
country doctor and sort of self taught man amateur mathematician
living in rural area about twenty miles outside of Evansville, Indiana.
(22:56):
He has been obsessed with what we just proved is
a nigh unsolvable problem. He always he stays up at
night and he's thinking, if I only use a standard
compass in a straightitch, can I construct a square with
the same area as a given circle. That's like, that's
(23:17):
his Kardashians, that's his Reality TV. That's what he thinks
about and watches and plays with.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Right, And he wasn't the first person to come up
with this idea, but he did think that he found
a better way to approach the problem. And this is
from reporting in Forbes by Keona and Smith.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
He started by trying to throw out Archimedes' formula for
the area of the circle and replace it with his
own formula, which was more complex and arguably more convoluted
in its writing style, which apparently was a bit problematic,
and he used some pretty imprecise versions of the original
(23:58):
measurements in his diagram, which included pie And as a
result of these calculations, he came to the conclusion that
the area of the circle was about twenty one percent
larger than its actual area. So basically he just you know,
to your point earlier been fueled by moxie and or hutzba.
(24:20):
He believed in what he was doing and aggressively pursued it.
But what he was doing was basically bad math. He
had the he had the strident confidence of the objectively incorrect.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
So he had this. His idea was that he can
approximate pie as a ratio of quote five fourths to
four three point two. That is not the correct way
to round pie. Goodwin doesn't care, because he had a
message from on high telling him it was okay, that's right.
(24:57):
In addition to being a country doc or a mathematician,
he was also a bit of a prophet. He believed
that he had experienced divine intervention, that God had told
him in March of eighteen eighty eight the true value
of pie. So this voice from on high just said Edward,
(25:19):
it's three point two, And he's like, what, who are
you on God? What does three point two mean? It's pie?
Speaker 2 (25:28):
All right on your way.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
So it's almost like he he worked backwards kind of
like to reach that conclusion. Almost it would seem like
he allowed himself to be guided by imprecise math in
order to reach that calculation. And as we know, that's
a real bad way to do science, to seek a particular.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Result that is not what one tends to want to do.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, Another just off the top example would be like,
let's say you have an equation and you know that
equation needs to equal ten. You have two numbers, you
have seven, and you have four, and so instead of
accepting that those numbers are true, you say, well, I'm
going to change that seven to a six. I'm going
(26:20):
to change the problems so that it feels like I
got the answer. And in his defense, it does seem
he was sincere. It does not seem that he was
trying to run a grift. He really did believe a
divine force, probably the Christian God, had spoken to him
and revealed this information, and armed with this, he goes
(26:42):
and remember he's a doctor, so he has some juice
in his community. He goes to local state reps and
one of them is a weird name Taylor. I record
or record probably, but I like I record to me, Sally, I.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Record it's true.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
And this is one thing that occurred to me when
reading up on this stuff, is like, we've seen this
kind of thing happen in politics about other things like
remember when the lawmakers. Some certain lawmakers were up in
arms about like furries and schools, like you know, kids
that like to dress up as animals.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
And they're putting litterboxes in the schools.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
And they literally were debating this, you know, in you know,
the House of Government, and it was just absolutely not true.
And it just goes to show it is a good
thing to write your congressman, to write your your lawmaker,
but make sure you do it with good information and
in good faith, because this is a perfect example. Well,
you know, this guy might not have been a bad
(27:45):
faith actor. He was acting on completely incorrect information and
it would have gone all the way likely due to
a lack of good information across the board. Thankfully, as
we talked about at the top of the episode a
little earlier, this true mathematician Waldo, where was he?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Well, he was there. He was there at the right time,
right place. Yes, can we get the name of this bill?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah, yeah, that's right, exactly. Yeah, So Taylor I record,
or hopefully Taylor I record. He is persuaded by Goodwin
to introduce this bill, because any state rep can introduce
a bill, and in eighteen ninety seven he goes to
the rest of his buddies in the halls of Indiana
(28:32):
power and introduces quote a bill for an act introducing
a new mathematical truth. And this legislation is a real thing. Yeah.
It promises that Goodwin will allow the state of Indiana
to publish his discovery in all its textbooks for free,
you guys, for foul thanks, and anyone else outside of
(28:54):
Indiana is going to have to regularly pay royalties to
Goodwin because that thing. God also said that. I imagine
God was also like, and every time you tell someone
they owe you three bocks.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I don't think you can own a mathematical truth. I
don't think that's how these types of discoveries work.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Not really, you're correct, I mean, how would you stop
people from thinking an idea? So, as you point out, Max,
that's not anywhere close to how publishing those discoveries works,
as you said, Noel, But that was not why lawmakers
were confused. Remember a lot of these guys are lawyers.
(29:34):
They know that's not how royalties, copyright residuals, or anything
like that works. They're mainly confused because they're like, why
are we doing this? Why are we here? Don't we
have other stuff to do? And they're trying to figure
out how to process this bill, right, what is the
parliamentary procedure for something this unusual? And one guy literally says,
(30:02):
make the Finance Committee do it.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
They do numbers, They do numbers, they do maths. You
got a wonder too, at this time in history, in
a state like Indiana. Do you think the fact that
he said it came into his head from God had
something to do with the support. Yeah, I'm sure you
have to have moved the needle a little bit.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
No, the year is twenty twenty three. There's parts in
this country where that would still probably work. Of course,
many parts of this country.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Actually, Yeah, and full disclosure, one of them is our
fair home state of Georgia. One hund So, another guy
who was who was in the mix, probably studied geometry
at some point in his life. He joked, we should
send this to the Committee on Swamp lends to quote
find a deserved grave.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
I love all the timey political speak, ay, and you
can all the snark is always so just drippingly delicious.
So eventually Build two forty six did find its way
to I guess what would seem like an appropriate committee,
The Committee on Education, which in its infinite wisdom approved
it and sent it to the General Assembly for a vote,
(31:20):
and as we mentioned, it did pass. On February sixth,
eighteen ninety seven. It was passed unanimously, sixty seven to zero.
Those guys just wanted to get to lunch. I think
that's true. It just seemed like such a to them,
like this is such a nothing, let's just move on.
But you know, to men of science, to people of science,
(31:42):
this is a big deal. This is like a blemish
on the reputation of the state. They know where this
is going to go and how it's gonna make their
state and their lawmakers, their legislative body a laughing stock.
And thankfully, as we mentioned a couple of times, Clarence Waldo,
our hero scientist who actual understood the calculations, was there
(32:03):
observing and happened to be in the exact right place
at the exact right time to keep this atrocity from
going through.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Right at least, at the very least to help reverse it.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely cut it off at the past as
best he could. And history hinges on such small things.
This guy was just in the room for something completely
different and was an ethical enough person to raise his
hand and pump the brakes.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
He stopped the.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Bill in the Senate because he said, look, this is
going to be a national, international, historic embarrassment for all
of you, and so any senators that could listen to reason,
he would take them aside. He was privately coaching them,
like saying, look, I know you're not a mathematician. This
is why this matters. And here are you know, you're
(32:56):
talking points, here's what you say, and anybody who knows
anything about math, they will be nodding their heads in
fervent agreement. At the same time, he's working against the
media machine because newspapers outside of Indiana had picked up
the story. Look at these local yokels out in the Midwest,
you know, and should this be the crossroads of America?
(33:20):
And they are making fun of the legislators. They're saying
they're a bunch of suckers, They're a bunch of nincom
Poops Center or in Hubble of Elkhart County tried to
kill the bill. He ran point on the offense and
he said it was utter folly. We might as well
try to legislate water to run up hill.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, and all of this was as a result of
the coaching that these folks received. Again, a lot of
these lawmakers, they're not experts in every field. They that's
why they have, you know, advisors and folks that they
depend on to help them. And if they're getting bad information,
then they oftentimes act on bad information. So this is
(34:03):
a good example of the system of law working more
or less like it's supposed to, because now there's this
whole counter rhetoric against what has come to pass.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I'm so glad. I'm so glad professors and nerds are
in the world. I feel like most legislative bodies should
just have some on call just hanging out, you know,
if they're broke, they maybe broke grad students. Just promise
them lunch and then have them raise their hand if
(34:35):
something sounds off. That would save us a lot of time.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Sounds like we need to give, like, you know, our lawmakers.
Zack Williams, research associate, Zach Williams. Yeah, yes, exactly. I'd
be one hundred down for Zach proof reading these bills.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I'd be down for any of us hanging out with
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I mean, even pay attention.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
If politics wasn't so dirty, then I probably would have
been more involved, but everybody vote.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I guess we just say at the end, I mean,
but the thing is, though, to the point of this
whole story is a lot of times there's just too
many things going on to keep abreast of everything and
also be like, you know, doing your own research and
your own work. So absolutely thanks to these folks that
pay attention to everything that is running through institutions of
(35:20):
law in this country and raising the red flag when
stupid stuff is about to go down.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
And to that point, you know, if we're being completely
objective and not romanticizing the story, the reason that bill
died was primarily due to Waldo's lobbying and the negative press.
It wasn't as though these senators themselves were mathematic luminaries.
There's something that was later reported by the Indianapolis Journal.
(35:50):
They say, quote all of the senators who spoke on
the bill admitted that they were ignorant of the merits
of the proposition. That's not a ding on them, because
if you are a senator, if you're a state rep
you are constantly inundated with things. You have entire teams,
small armies, cadres of people who are experts. Hopefully if
(36:11):
you're doing it right, they are experts on something and
not corporate shills.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Honestly, it's a positive that these folks would even admit
that they didn't know what they didn't know and that
they sought advice from the right people, because, as we know,
a lot of politicians just kind of bs their way
through stuff and act like they know exactly what they're
talking about and are.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Much the worse for it.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
So this is a pretty rare thing for lawmakers to do,
to say, well, we didn't really know, and now we know,
and we're basically sorry.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I think that's a great point, and so let's send
the main message there. Thank you to the conscientious people
who are able to stand up and say, hey, let's
take another look at this. No one in this story
is a bad guy. You know, Goodwin again, he was
(37:06):
a good faith actor.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
He was sincere.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
But sincerity because we believe something to be true does
not make it objectively true. Anyway. That's the crazy story
that leads us to Pie Day, which is so much fun.
There's so many different ways to celebrate Pie Day, and
there are so many other weird facts about Indiana.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah, it's also funny, Like I mean, when I was
a kid. I first heard about Pie Day in like
middle school, and it involves also eating pie which are
circular confections and delicious.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, definitely. But I mean I think one of my
favorite things about this is, uh, as you guys mentioned,
we're trying to do all the states, I have this
neurotic thing set up to keep draving all.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Sure, yeah, thank you, and take that dud I'm getting. Actually,
souf John Stevens is recovering from something pretty serious right now.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
So yeah, the immune condition. Yeah, he's got a new
record coming out that sounds amazing. When I say take
that suit, I mean, take the advice of your doctors.
You'll get through it. Man, You're awesome.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
But yeah, so I've been going through so when finding
these stories, I just kind of google a lot of things.
I read a lot of like lists of stuff, and
I found some other weird things about Indiana. They have
a town called Santa Claus, Indiana. It's a themed town
and they get half a million letters to Santa every year.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah, it is through the border of Kentucky. I think
it's because a lot of times kids will just put
Santa Claus on the envelope.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
That sounds about right. They produced twenty percent of the
country's popcorn.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Check out our stuff They Don't want you to Know.
Episode on corn.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Wait is Oraville Reddenbacher from this part of the World's
from Miami.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
He was big in the drug game.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
What that's not true. They have had six vice presidents
in American history. We've also had two more three more
vice presidents than actual presidents. I don't know if you
guys knew that.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
I did not, And I also did not know that
is illegal for a liquor store in Indiana to sell
milk or soft drinks. And I've got to be honest,
being kind of a square goody goodye for like into
my adult life, I thought package stores sold boxes.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. I think we all had that, had that moment
at some point. Yeah, but I was like in college,
Oh okay, yeah, I mean I'm gonna tell you that
that one really interests me. I'm thinking trying to see
if there's enough of a story there to do like
a Blue Loss Part two, because I would love to
do that kind of seems like because it's a weird one.
It's like I can't buy a soda and a bottle
of liquor.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
At the same time, I've got a collection of some
of those as well that it's crazy how many are
still around, even if they're not strictly enforced. But yes,
Blue Laws Part two folks too did We've got some
more crazy stuff on the way. We're going to explore
the life and times of Aaron Burr. We're gonna have
a bit of a bit of a toilet or sanitation week.
(39:58):
Tune in for that. Check out our Vegas episode on
Labor Day if you haven't yet, And to go ahead
and advertise it, probably the most biased episode we ever
do is going to be about the Hoover Dam, because
I'm so taken with it.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I was as well.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
It is a without sending to propagandistic, a modern marvel
of engineering, and probably some pie went into it, not
the confection, but the math.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Absolutely. So thank you to thank you to who I'm
calling Hoover Matt, our wonderful historian when we explored the
Hoover Dam. Thanks as always to our super producer and
research associate for this episode, mister Max Williams. Who else
and who else?
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Oh, Christopher Osio. It is here in spirit Eve's Jeff
co All the hits. Alex Williams composed our theme, and
of course Ben you.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
And also with you and thanks to Greg and oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I like Greg, good guy, great gambler. We'll see you
next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the
(00:27):
show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
tuning in. It's us back from Las Vegas with stories
to tell. Shout out to our main man, super producer,
mister Max Williams. Max, what I think it's the right
and ethical thing for Nola and I to assure you
(00:48):
that you missed absolutely nothing in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm ben you were damn But you guys know what,
while y'all were in Vegas, I was learning about math.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
It was probably some math that we could have put
to use to game those poker machines, which is definitely
a thing that you can do.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, you got to figure out of them, that's right.
No true story.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
I went to this local bar in the Arts district
and was standing in line for the bathroom and there
are these two older gentlemen who were talking about gambling machines,
and one of them said that a friend of his
actually designs the machines, and that even he has no
way of gaming the system because the system is designed
to game you.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
That's true. We have an episode on stuff they don't
want you to know coming out called stuff casinos don't
want you to know. Pay attention to that. It's a
live show, and you'll also hear a show we did
about Labor Day, also live in Vegas, with some help
from our friends at Bow's. It was a weird time.
Max I won. I didn't win a lot of money,
(01:54):
but a guy named Greg won a lot of money.
And that's a story for off air. It's it's the
true story. It's a weird one. But to your point,
Nol one of my very good friends in my old
sketch comedy group, or No. One of my old improv teams,
his day job is designing slot machines, video slot machines,
(02:16):
and he's in just the same situation as that stranger's friend.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
At the bar.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It's it's very much a black box when you get
to that random number generation on the slots.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I actually won big on one hit first twenty bucks
I put into a machine. I won one thousand dollars
and I still ended up two hundred dollars down overall Vegas. Baby,
it's the price of doing business.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Greg M. And oh I did find out Greg M
is a real person, Greg M. That's what we're just saying, M.
Greg m who I became for the entirety of our
trip there, received one hundred dollars credit from a casino
and then walked away with about seven hundred dollars minus
(03:03):
those egregious ATM fees.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So thanks Greg, you win, Greg wins. Greg will loses,
but Noel had a good time. Man learned a lot
about the nature of the human spirit, most of which
I learned from the Hoover Dam video, yes, which is.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Very much propaganda that reminds me of going to the
border of North Korea. That has nothing to do with
anything but today's story, courtesy of our research associate, mister
Max Williams, is about creative problem solving, or an attempt
to do so, thinking out of the box, saying, hey,
if there's some math I can't quite math, why don't
(03:40):
I change the rules of the game. And that is
where our story kind of begins. Let's get into pie day.
You guys know where nerds, fellow ridiculous historians. One of
our good friends, Tyler Klang, who keeps things running backstage,
has memorized pie I kid you not to an egregious
(04:02):
number of digits.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
That's a fun flex. I know it up to three
point one four, one five nine.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
I know up to three point one four.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I only know the one five nine because it's on
the research doct that I'm looking at right now.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
And every year on March fourteenth, this might come up
because you may run into one of the people who
wants to have a pie flex. And I've seen people
go back and it's like a weird battle rap, which
I love, where they go back and forth naming the
digits of pie. It's also a road trip game. If
(04:37):
you are not fun an.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So every I mean, it depends on your definition of fun,
you'd be incredibly fixed all kinds. In math circles. You're
probably the bell of the ball. Pie has in fact
been calculated way beyond even what Tyler has memorized, up
to fifty trillion digits, a number that is incalculable to
(04:59):
the of this particular podcaster, and that's of course beyond
its decimal point.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It is a.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Transcendental number, which I had not heard that term used before.
I always associate that with more metaphysical pursuits and meditation
and all of that, but apparently numbers can transcend reality
as well, and it is also an irrational number. You
just can't talk to it. You know, it just insists
upon itself. It's so irrational.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
It's one of the most fascinating mathematical phenomenon right because PI,
at its basis, is the ratio of the circumference of
a circle to its diameter. Now, most people will tell
you three point one, four, one, five nine is close
enough for government work. But this strange, distinct nature of
(05:50):
PI has captured the human mind for time immemorial. That's
why every day on March fourteenth, people celebrate Pie Day.
That's why, you know, like you said, there are a
lot of people who want to memorize or count out
every everything. That's why there's an excellent film called Pie.
It's a great date movie. Just trust us, don't read
(06:12):
these spoilers.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Tie again. Early first one drilled in their head like
a little.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
All Stars that It probably came out in the nineties,
like maybe ninety eight, ninety nine, something like that. But yeah,
it's also in really really gritty filmy black and white.
So in that scene that you're describing the splatter, it
just looks like black ink. It's pretty intense. It's a
really cool movie. It's Kabbala as well. It's there's like
(06:43):
a crossover of the math side. The main character as
a mathematician and he encounters this sect of almost like
a cult of Kabbala followers who are essentially searching for
like a sacred geometry something.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah, it's like it's almost a callback to Arthur C.
Clark's Nine Billion Names of God because they induct them.
They've got the teflin and all that stuff. And then
there's of course an evil corporate conspiracy.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It's just great.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Ye. And here's the thing. Wild Pie is chaotic. While
it seems that there is no predictable repetition, let alone
an end to the digit, it is still very very
important because we need to understand circumferences of circles. This
(07:34):
is huge for space exploration. Like NASA pointed out, engineers
at their organization build spacecraft that make these elliptical orbits
and guzzle fuel from cylindrical fuel tanks and measure distance
on circular wheels.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
All of those are round things. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Another thing that comes up in the film Pie is
the idea of the golden ratio and a lot of
these things that sort of appear in Native Sure, it
would appear that Pie is in some way a secret
of the universe.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, it might be, if you believe in reality as
a simulation, it might be some of the code used
to program resources.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So we're giving you that really quick background on pie
as a cultural phenomenon, as a as a mathematic fascination,
because it turns out, fellow ridiculous historians, that we are
not alone in our fascination and with with a little
(08:36):
bit of gumption and a lot of hutspa. Over in
Indiana back in the day, there was a guy who
thought he figured out pie.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, figured it out better than all the other science
types that have been doing it since antiquity, including folks
like Pythagoras, Archimedes of Syracuse, all the hits, you know.
And this fellow in Indiana was like, no, no, no,
I got this.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I think we think.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
I think a change will do us good here in
the fine state of India.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
He had help, He had some divine intervention.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You could say, hey, wait, do you know the upcoming
stuff they don't want you to know? Episode?
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Max, I don't, but I know this episode because I
wrote it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeah, Max, you wrote our research brief here and I
really enjoy some of the stuff you found about the
history of pie. We said time immemorial. For humans, that
means they knew about pie for about four thousand years.
And it keeps reminding me of some of my favorite
(09:49):
science fiction. Even if human civilization calculated the number of
seconds in four thousand years and calculated pie to the
number of seconds in four thousand years, we would still
not have the whole number. It would there would still
be another digit after that, and another after that, and
(10:12):
after that, and so for much of human history. Like
you mentioned, no Archimedes, Pythagoras, They're trying to calculate to
the best of their ability, and every single person ended
up eventually rounding up or rounding down and saying close enough.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Close to three.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
The ancient Babylonians calculated the area of a circle using
the formula of three times the square of its radius,
which gave that value of Pie equals three. On an
ancient Babylonian tablet circa nineteen hundred to sixteen eighty BCE,
it shows the value of three point one two five
(10:52):
for Pi, which is a bit closer to the modern
day approximation. Another ancient text, the Wrinned Papyrus circus sixteen
fifty BCE, shows a little bit more of a look
into the math of ancient Egypt, which was shockingly advanced.
(11:13):
The emptions were no slouches when it came to figure in.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
The pyramids might not look that impressive until you realize
how much math went into building them.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Oh, Ben, I watched a little bit when we got
back from our trip last night, just to kind of
mellow out Kunk on Earth, and oh and suggested it.
And there's a great line sort of in the beginning
when it's just doing like a clip show, kind of
showing what the show is going to be, where she's
talking to some expert on math or I believe history,
and say, so, why are people so confused about how
(11:47):
the pyramids were built? It's obviously just big bricks shaped
like a triangle.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, yeah, did you enjoy it?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
I enjoyed what I saw. I did pass out, but
I look for to revisiting it. It's a delight.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I will revisit it to a Fortunately, I had to
stay up all night, so I'm a little sleep deprived.
But hey, pie never ends, so why should we? And
then let's go to Archimedes just to flesh out the
background here, folks. So Archimedes of Syracuse, not the one
you're thinking of. He is one of the greatest mathematicians
(12:21):
of the ancient world. And so he tackled this the
way smart people always do. He looked around at precedents,
he asked questions, and eventually he said, look, I can
approximate the area of a circle if I use the
existing Pythagorean theorem to find the area of two regular polygons.
(12:44):
And it's like old Matroshkadal, right, there's a polygon inscribed
within the circle, and then there's a polygon outside of
the circle, And so he said, the actual area of
the circle is somewhere in there. So now if I
know how big the outside shape is and how big
(13:04):
the inside shape is, I know that the circumference of
the like the circle itself, the area of it is
somewhere in between there.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And shout out to Exploratorium dot edu, which is a
learning laboratory that you can visit in San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
You can actually buy tickets.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Seems like a really cool place, a science museum and
has some really good information on their website, including a
brief history of PI. So as you can tell, this
stuff goes way way way back, involving some historical figures
who are way smarter than us, including back in ancient
China around four twenty nine to five oh one CE
(13:46):
the mathematician Zoo Chong Shei.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, Hutong she was brilliant. Is kind of the the
Chinese Archimedes. If you ignore the timeline, he would not
have known of Archimedes' clever method. Oh, by the way,
don't want to miss this, folks. Archimedes his process found
that pies between three and one seventh and three and
(14:11):
ten seventy one, so he got pretty close. Not bad dude,
and I had not been says to Archimedes. You know
a good hustle bro anyway, so our buddy shoe. He
calculates the value of the ratio of the circumference of
a circle to its diameter to be three fifty five
over one thirteen. And to compute this, he started with
(14:34):
the closest kind of polygon that could approximate a circle
and still had discernible sides. And then he did hundreds
and hundreds of weird calculations. Weird to me at least
of square roots carried out to nine decimal places. So
also good hustle shoe and then the letter. The letter
actually doesn't come around until the seventeen hundreds to represent
(14:57):
this concept.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Yeah, and from the section that brief history of HIE article,
I learned that you can have a polygon is just
a kind of catch all for a shape that has sides.
And it refers to in this computation done by Shangxi
A two five hundred and seventy six gone, which is
a thing.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah, it's from far enough away, it looks kind of
like a circle, almost like pixels, like you have to
like zoom in to kind of see the building blocks.
And now knowing all that, we are going to fast
forward Max, we get fast forward Q to a bit
(15:40):
more modern history. We're fast forwarding and we are making
this our Indiana state. Thank you, Max. Indiana calls itself
(16:01):
the Crossroads of America if you've ever been. It's a
nice place outside of Erie. It borders Lake Michigan, and
you know, and Max's home state of Michigan to the north,
Ohio's on the east, Kentucky's in the south, Illinois over
in the west. So this place is peak Midwest. Its story,
its modern story dates back to sixteen seventy nine when
(16:23):
according to our pals of Britannica, a guy named Renee
Ruleboat Cavilla has traveled from Boat down the Saint Joseph
River and arrived at northern Indiana and colonialism happened. It
was French for a little bit. In seventeen sixty three,
they gave it to England. I think his title even
(16:45):
goes a little further with us Sieur, which means lord
de la Salle, and that Crossroads of America, you know,
I guess is a sort of a nod to this
sort of exploration kind of history.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
So can I jump in here? This is something I
did not realize that other than Hawaii, it is the
smallest land massed state west of the Appalachians. That's weird.
I did not realize that.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
It doesn't. It doesn't look like it, right.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
It's not because it's not a small state.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
But that's aboutares and the caveat is the location of
the Appalachians, right or Appalachians. So yeah, the United States
found out they're going they were going to have a
lot more land once they got past the Appellations, and
then did a bunch of horrible things which we're about
to talk about.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
They manifested a destiny that is ethically fraught. So the
interesting thing happens on the way to England. When the
English forces take possession of what becomes Indiana, they prohibit
further European settlement. However, let's remember communication lines were not
(17:54):
super strong. It was very difficult to project force across
an ocean at that point, so every ignored this decree.
In seventeen seventy four, the English Parliament said, okay, we
are gonna annex the lands to Quebec. And then there's
this whole revolution, the peasant unpleasantness they call it in England,
(18:18):
and we call it the American Revolution. And during that time,
you know, everybody is scrambling to possess the land that
becomes called Indiana, Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, they're all in this.
And I don't know how deep we want to go
into the history, but what you need to know is
(18:38):
while all these European and colonial forces were batting the
ball back and forth, the European settlers were moving into
an area with a large, thriving indigenous population, and they
were doing terrible stuff. People don't always want to hear
that but it is the truth, and you can it's
(19:00):
so objectively true that you can find it in any
reputable history of Indiana, even just the general intrigue from
our friends at history dot.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Com m HM.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
And that all resulted in the well, not resulted in,
but a big one, and we've mentioned this recently, was
the eighteen to eleven Battle of Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,
which was won by William Henry Harrison, who was a
general at the time and of course would go on
to become the President of the United States. And the
(19:31):
name Indiana, which it's pretty easy to make this connection
loosely translates to land of the Indians, but as we
also know, Indians is not a thing, right like they
Columbus was looking for the Indies and he did not
find them.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Sign not. Have you guys heard about the Native tribe
suing the Washington commanders telling them they need to change
their name back to not not Washington football team, whichever
agreads was the best one of the three, but to
the one before that.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
So yeah, I heard, I heard there was a lawsuit. Interesting,
We'll have to see how that shakes out. Maybe once
it becomes history, we can we can tell that ridiculous story.
I mean, it does sound like we're you know, we're
going in a couple of different directions here, folks, But
(20:26):
hopefully they are helpful directions, because get this, the entire
time all that other stuff is happening, folks have no
idea about HI. I mean, they have no idea. They
haven't solved it. They don't know how it ends, they
don't know if it repeats. And that continues today. Now
and we fast forward, we meet They're in Indiana. A
(20:56):
mathematics professor Purdue University, his name Clarence Waldo, and Clarence
Waldo in February of eighteen ninety seven, shows up at
the Indiana State House and he's trying to lobby for
his school, for Purdue University. For everybody outside of the US,
lobbying is lobbying is the word we use for bribery.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
So when Waldo was hanging out in the state House
to push for those increases in school budgets, he witnessed
something that resonated with him. House built two forty six,
a measure intended to legally change the value of the
number Pi to three point two, and it passed its
third and final reading in the General Assembly's lower house,
(21:43):
and he is quoted as saying the following in response
to that event, imagine my surprise, and I discovered that
I was in the midst of a debate upon a
piece of mathematical legislation. After the vote was concluded, a
legislator walked over to Walder, who at the time was
also the president of the Indiana Academy of Science, and
suggested that he meet the man behind the bill, to
(22:06):
which the professor politely declined.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, and said, I'm already acquainted with as many crazy
people as I care to know. Shout out to an
absolutely non crazy guy, a ripping writer Nathan Gosh writing
for the Indiana Capitol Chronicle, who's giving us the ins
and outs of this story. The question is what's going on?
Why did this bill pop up? This is interesting to
(22:31):
Waldo because doctor Waldo is a mathematics professor, and that's
when he learns about the crazy quote unquote crazy guy
the legislators referring to Edwin Goodwin. Edwin Goodwin is a
country doctor and sort of self taught man amateur mathematician
living in rural area about twenty miles outside of Evansville, Indiana.
(22:56):
He has been obsessed with what we just proved is
a nigh unsolvable problem. He always he stays up at
night and he's thinking, if I only use a standard
compass in a straightitch, can I construct a square with
the same area as a given circle. That's like, that's
(23:17):
his Kardashians, that's his Reality TV. That's what he thinks
about and watches and plays with.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Right, And he wasn't the first person to come up
with this idea, but he did think that he found
a better way to approach the problem. And this is
from reporting in Forbes by Keona and Smith.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
He started by trying to throw out Archimedes' formula for
the area of the circle and replace it with his
own formula, which was more complex and arguably more convoluted
in its writing style, which apparently was a bit problematic,
and he used some pretty imprecise versions of the original
(23:58):
measurements in his diagram, which included pie And as a
result of these calculations, he came to the conclusion that
the area of the circle was about twenty one percent
larger than its actual area. So basically he just you know,
to your point earlier been fueled by moxie and or hutzba.
(24:20):
He believed in what he was doing and aggressively pursued it.
But what he was doing was basically bad math. He
had the he had the strident confidence of the objectively incorrect.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
So he had this. His idea was that he can
approximate pie as a ratio of quote five fourths to
four three point two. That is not the correct way
to round pie. Goodwin doesn't care, because he had a
message from on high telling him it was okay, that's right.
(24:57):
In addition to being a country doc or a mathematician,
he was also a bit of a prophet. He believed
that he had experienced divine intervention, that God had told
him in March of eighteen eighty eight the true value
of pie. So this voice from on high just said Edward,
(25:19):
it's three point two, And he's like, what, who are
you on God? What does three point two mean? It's pie?
Speaker 2 (25:28):
All right on your way.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
So it's almost like he he worked backwards kind of
like to reach that conclusion. Almost it would seem like
he allowed himself to be guided by imprecise math in
order to reach that calculation. And as we know, that's
a real bad way to do science, to seek a particular.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Result that is not what one tends to want to do.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Yeah, Another just off the top example would be like,
let's say you have an equation and you know that
equation needs to equal ten. You have two numbers, you
have seven, and you have four, and so instead of
accepting that those numbers are true, you say, well, I'm
going to change that seven to a six. I'm going
(26:20):
to change the problems so that it feels like I
got the answer. And in his defense, it does seem
he was sincere. It does not seem that he was
trying to run a grift. He really did believe a
divine force, probably the Christian God, had spoken to him
and revealed this information, and armed with this, he goes
(26:42):
and remember he's a doctor, so he has some juice
in his community. He goes to local state reps and
one of them is a weird name Taylor. I record
or record probably, but I like I record to me, Sally, I.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Record it's true.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
And this is one thing that occurred to me when
reading up on this stuff, is like, we've seen this
kind of thing happen in politics about other things like
remember when the lawmakers. Some certain lawmakers were up in
arms about like furries and schools, like you know, kids
that like to dress up as animals.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
And they're putting litterboxes in the schools.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
And they literally were debating this, you know, in you know,
the House of Government, and it was just absolutely not true.
And it just goes to show it is a good
thing to write your congressman, to write your your lawmaker,
but make sure you do it with good information and
in good faith, because this is a perfect example. Well,
you know, this guy might not have been a bad
(27:45):
faith actor. He was acting on completely incorrect information and
it would have gone all the way likely due to
a lack of good information across the board. Thankfully, as
we talked about at the top of the episode a
little earlier, this true mathematician Waldo, where was he?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Well, he was there. He was there at the right time,
right place. Yes, can we get the name of this bill?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah, yeah, that's right, exactly. Yeah, So Taylor I record,
or hopefully Taylor I record. He is persuaded by Goodwin
to introduce this bill, because any state rep can introduce
a bill, and in eighteen ninety seven he goes to
the rest of his buddies in the halls of Indiana
(28:32):
power and introduces quote a bill for an act introducing
a new mathematical truth. And this legislation is a real thing. Yeah.
It promises that Goodwin will allow the state of Indiana
to publish his discovery in all its textbooks for free,
you guys, for foul thanks, and anyone else outside of
(28:54):
Indiana is going to have to regularly pay royalties to
Goodwin because that thing. God also said that. I imagine
God was also like, and every time you tell someone
they owe you three bocks.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
I don't think you can own a mathematical truth. I
don't think that's how these types of discoveries work.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Not really, you're correct, I mean, how would you stop
people from thinking an idea? So, as you point out, Max,
that's not anywhere close to how publishing those discoveries works,
as you said, Noel, But that was not why lawmakers
were confused. Remember a lot of these guys are lawyers.
(29:34):
They know that's not how royalties, copyright residuals, or anything
like that works. They're mainly confused because they're like, why
are we doing this? Why are we here? Don't we
have other stuff to do? And they're trying to figure
out how to process this bill, right, what is the
parliamentary procedure for something this unusual? And one guy literally says,
(30:02):
make the Finance Committee do it.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
They do numbers, They do numbers, they do maths. You
got a wonder too, at this time in history, in
a state like Indiana. Do you think the fact that
he said it came into his head from God had
something to do with the support. Yeah, I'm sure you
have to have moved the needle a little bit.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
No, the year is twenty twenty three. There's parts in
this country where that would still probably work. Of course,
many parts of this country.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Actually, Yeah, and full disclosure, one of them is our
fair home state of Georgia. One hund So, another guy
who was who was in the mix, probably studied geometry
at some point in his life. He joked, we should
send this to the Committee on Swamp lends to quote
find a deserved grave.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
I love all the timey political speak, ay, and you
can all the snark is always so just drippingly delicious.
So eventually Build two forty six did find its way
to I guess what would seem like an appropriate committee,
The Committee on Education, which in its infinite wisdom approved
it and sent it to the General Assembly for a vote,
(31:20):
and as we mentioned, it did pass. On February sixth,
eighteen ninety seven. It was passed unanimously, sixty seven to zero.
Those guys just wanted to get to lunch. I think
that's true. It just seemed like such a to them,
like this is such a nothing, let's just move on.
But you know, to men of science, to people of science,
(31:42):
this is a big deal. This is like a blemish
on the reputation of the state. They know where this
is going to go and how it's gonna make their
state and their lawmakers, their legislative body a laughing stock.
And thankfully, as we mentioned a couple of times, Clarence Waldo,
our hero scientist who actual understood the calculations, was there
(32:03):
observing and happened to be in the exact right place
at the exact right time to keep this atrocity from
going through.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Right at least, at the very least to help reverse it.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely cut it off at the past as
best he could. And history hinges on such small things.
This guy was just in the room for something completely
different and was an ethical enough person to raise his
hand and pump the brakes.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
He stopped the.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Bill in the Senate because he said, look, this is
going to be a national, international, historic embarrassment for all
of you, and so any senators that could listen to reason,
he would take them aside. He was privately coaching them,
like saying, look, I know you're not a mathematician. This
is why this matters. And here are you know, you're
(32:56):
talking points, here's what you say, and anybody who knows
anything about math, they will be nodding their heads in
fervent agreement. At the same time, he's working against the
media machine because newspapers outside of Indiana had picked up
the story. Look at these local yokels out in the Midwest,
you know, and should this be the crossroads of America?
(33:20):
And they are making fun of the legislators. They're saying
they're a bunch of suckers, They're a bunch of nincom
Poops Center or in Hubble of Elkhart County tried to
kill the bill. He ran point on the offense and
he said it was utter folly. We might as well
try to legislate water to run up hill.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, and all of this was as a result of
the coaching that these folks received. Again, a lot of
these lawmakers, they're not experts in every field. They that's
why they have, you know, advisors and folks that they
depend on to help them. And if they're getting bad information,
then they oftentimes act on bad information. So this is
(34:03):
a good example of the system of law working more
or less like it's supposed to, because now there's this
whole counter rhetoric against what has come to pass.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
I'm so glad. I'm so glad professors and nerds are
in the world. I feel like most legislative bodies should
just have some on call just hanging out, you know,
if they're broke, they maybe broke grad students. Just promise
them lunch and then have them raise their hand if
(34:35):
something sounds off. That would save us a lot of time.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Sounds like we need to give, like, you know, our lawmakers.
Zack Williams, research associate, Zach Williams. Yeah, yes, exactly. I'd
be one hundred down for Zach proof reading these bills.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
I'd be down for any of us hanging out with
that stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I mean, even pay attention.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
If politics wasn't so dirty, then I probably would have
been more involved, but everybody vote.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
I guess we just say at the end, I mean,
but the thing is, though, to the point of this
whole story is a lot of times there's just too
many things going on to keep abreast of everything and
also be like, you know, doing your own research and
your own work. So absolutely thanks to these folks that
pay attention to everything that is running through institutions of
(35:20):
law in this country and raising the red flag when
stupid stuff is about to go down.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
And to that point, you know, if we're being completely
objective and not romanticizing the story, the reason that bill
died was primarily due to Waldo's lobbying and the negative press.
It wasn't as though these senators themselves were mathematic luminaries.
There's something that was later reported by the Indianapolis Journal.
(35:50):
They say, quote all of the senators who spoke on
the bill admitted that they were ignorant of the merits
of the proposition. That's not a ding on them, because
if you are a senator, if you're a state rep
you are constantly inundated with things. You have entire teams,
small armies, cadres of people who are experts. Hopefully if
(36:11):
you're doing it right, they are experts on something and
not corporate shills.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Honestly, it's a positive that these folks would even admit
that they didn't know what they didn't know and that
they sought advice from the right people, because, as we know,
a lot of politicians just kind of bs their way
through stuff and act like they know exactly what they're
talking about and are.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Much the worse for it.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
So this is a pretty rare thing for lawmakers to do,
to say, well, we didn't really know, and now we know,
and we're basically sorry.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
I think that's a great point, and so let's send
the main message there. Thank you to the conscientious people
who are able to stand up and say, hey, let's
take another look at this. No one in this story
is a bad guy. You know, Goodwin again, he was
(37:06):
a good faith actor.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
He was sincere.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
But sincerity because we believe something to be true does
not make it objectively true. Anyway. That's the crazy story
that leads us to Pie Day, which is so much fun.
There's so many different ways to celebrate Pie Day, and
there are so many other weird facts about Indiana.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Yeah, it's also funny, Like I mean, when I was
a kid. I first heard about Pie Day in like
middle school, and it involves also eating pie which are
circular confections and delicious.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, definitely. But I mean I think one of my
favorite things about this is, uh, as you guys mentioned,
we're trying to do all the states, I have this
neurotic thing set up to keep draving all.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
Sure, yeah, thank you, and take that dud I'm getting. Actually,
souf John Stevens is recovering from something pretty serious right now.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
So yeah, the immune condition. Yeah, he's got a new
record coming out that sounds amazing. When I say take
that suit, I mean, take the advice of your doctors.
You'll get through it. Man, You're awesome.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
But yeah, so I've been going through so when finding
these stories, I just kind of google a lot of things.
I read a lot of like lists of stuff, and
I found some other weird things about Indiana. They have
a town called Santa Claus, Indiana. It's a themed town
and they get half a million letters to Santa every year.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah, it is through the border of Kentucky. I think
it's because a lot of times kids will just put
Santa Claus on the envelope.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
That sounds about right. They produced twenty percent of the
country's popcorn.
Speaker 1 (38:34):
Check out our stuff They Don't want you to Know.
Episode on corn.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Wait is Oraville Reddenbacher from this part of the World's
from Miami.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
He was big in the drug game.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
What that's not true. They have had six vice presidents
in American history. We've also had two more three more
vice presidents than actual presidents. I don't know if you
guys knew that.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
I did not, And I also did not know that
is illegal for a liquor store in Indiana to sell
milk or soft drinks. And I've got to be honest,
being kind of a square goody goodye for like into
my adult life, I thought package stores sold boxes.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. I think we all had that, had that moment
at some point. Yeah, but I was like in college,
Oh okay, yeah, I mean I'm gonna tell you that
that one really interests me. I'm thinking trying to see
if there's enough of a story there to do like
a Blue Loss Part two, because I would love to
do that kind of seems like because it's a weird one.
It's like I can't buy a soda and a bottle
of liquor.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
At the same time, I've got a collection of some
of those as well that it's crazy how many are
still around, even if they're not strictly enforced. But yes,
Blue Laws Part two folks too did We've got some
more crazy stuff on the way. We're going to explore
the life and times of Aaron Burr. We're gonna have
a bit of a bit of a toilet or sanitation week.
(39:58):
Tune in for that. Check out our Vegas episode on
Labor Day if you haven't yet, And to go ahead
and advertise it, probably the most biased episode we ever
do is going to be about the Hoover Dam, because
I'm so taken with it.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
I was as well.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
It is a without sending to propagandistic, a modern marvel
of engineering, and probably some pie went into it, not
the confection, but the math.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Absolutely. So thank you to thank you to who I'm
calling Hoover Matt, our wonderful historian when we explored the
Hoover Dam. Thanks as always to our super producer and
research associate for this episode, mister Max Williams. Who else
and who else?
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Oh, Christopher Osio. It is here in spirit Eve's Jeff
co All the hits. Alex Williams composed our theme, and
of course Ben you.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
And also with you and thanks to Greg and oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
I like Greg, good guy, great gambler. We'll see you
next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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