[Avodah] previous calculations of pi

[Zev Sero]

On 15/01/2012 2:27 PM, Harvey Benton wrote:
> some have complained that the rishonim were not accurate enought when
> it came to their description of pi eg, they named it as being3 instead
> of 3.14 etc.

No rishon says that pi is 3.  No acharon says it's 3.  The mishna can
easily be read as simply giving a number rounded to the nearest integer;
as the Rambam says, since pi is irrational it *must* be rounded at some
point, so why not at the integer level?  The only problem is the gemara
which insists that pi is precisely 3, without the slightest deviation;
tosfos asks the question and offers no answer, but somehow managed to
keep his emunah anyway and move on to the next sugya.


-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon