LL-L "Etymology" 2009.11.27 (04) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 27 November 2009 - Volume 04
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.11.27 (02) [EN]

> From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.11.26 (02) [EN]

> That pre-supposes that:
> a)   the term was first coined in English, so it would sound like
> "pie";
> b)   it was first used after the introduction of decimal notation so
> it could be expressed as 3.14....etc.
>
> Neither is true; a likely source is that it is the first letter of
> Perimeter (in Greek), and it was always expressed a fraction with 22/7
> as the closest estimate, long before decimal notation was invented.

But, but, but... it's too much to be a coincidence, surely??! It just
goes to show that no matter how likely or unlikely a thing seems, it
doesn't mean much without the proper science behind it.

> The Egyptians thought it had to be 3.  It clearly wasn't when they
> measured it, so they deduced that it must be a Divine 3 that the Gods
> used, rather than mere mortal 1-2-3 that we use.  This we call "The
> Wisdom of the Ancients".

Now veering a bit off topic, but I've read that traditional Chinese
mathematicians considered pi to be the square root of ten (about 3.16).
Even after a Chinese father-and-son team calculated by far the most
accurate value of pi known anywhere in the world at the time, Chinese
mathematicians went right on using the "beautiful" rather than the
correct value of pi.

•

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