Alabama pi story on Internet proves to be a lemon

Copyright 1998 The Montgomery (AL) Adviser
May 8, 1998



HUNTSVILLE -- Did the Alabama Legislature really pass a bill to redefine the mathematical value of pi, changing it from 3.14 to 3? If you believe what you read on the Internet, it did.

A seriously written story making the rounds through cyberspace describes how NASA engineers in Huntsville are upset about the proposed change, as are college professors. But Alabama students need not quit using 3.14 when finding the area of a circle.

Pi isn't changing in Alabama.

The story is a hoax. But it has been relayed by Internet users all over the U.S. It ended up on a Huntsville radio station and prompted calls to The Huntsville Times.

Brian Hanson, data systems manager for the Legislature, said he received a call Wednesday from a Chicago radio station inquiring about the legislation. He said he had no idea how the story originated. The first giveaway that the story is a hoax is that it says Gov. Guy Hunt plans to sign the legislation. And the purported sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Leonard Lee Lawson, R-Crossville, doesn't exist.

The story also includes criticism from University of Alabama Professor Kim Johanson about the Legislature trying to change a mathematical constant. Math professors at Alabama say they've never heard of Johanson, but they've heard plenty about the Internet story. "We had a good time with it," said Professor Martyn Dickson, who said the math department received the story from someone at Purdue University.

Katie Clark of the Purdue Life Sciences Library said she received the story from science librarian Richard Funkhouser, who read it on a Yale University posting, which had received the story from a Hawaii address.

"No, I didn't write it," said Liz Bryson, an official with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Organization in Honolulu. "We've had a lot of fun with it, though."

She said she'd heard the story was an April Fool's joke -- one that apparently wouldn't die.

Funkhouser noted that the Indiana House of Representatives once tried to legislate the value of pi, but the Senate let the bill die after Purdue math Professor C.A. Waldo explained the idiocy of putting pi into Indiana law.

The year: 1897.

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