Re: Pi Day Exercise

In article <frhgaq$dcm$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Ingo Siekmann <Ingo-Siekmann@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> In my school time (20+ years ago), the math teacher told us to set pi at

> 3.15 for tests and homework, because we all used different pocket 
> calculators with "different post-comma pis".
> Bet you start crying now. :-)

Why can't they teach significant digits?   Were slide rules in use when 
you were at school?

I hate it when people point to the Bible as being wrong by picking an 
example where something is 3 radiuses in cir***ference.   To one 
significant digit (which seems not at all inappropriate), pi = 3.  They 
had plenty of other examples to use without showing their ignorance.

Apparently pi to 39 digits is significant to use to measure the size of 
the universe with an error smaller than a hydrogen atom.

So we need to use the precision demanded by the task.