Quote:
Originally Posted by wayrad
Cool article. He doesn't mention the surveyer's wheel idea of why numbers similar to pi can often be derived from manipulating the dimensions of Egyptian monuments; i.e. that they used a wheel for measuring out land, with a diameter equal to a standard unit of measurement which was also be used in determining height, so it would build pi in there without the builders being aware of it. That theory must be more recent, I suppose.
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Good call! If you put a stick in the ground and tie a string to it you can demonstrate pi from tracing once around the stick without needing to know any mathematics. If pi had
not shown up in any of the Egyptian monuments, now
that would have been remarkable!