The Indiana Lawmakers Who Voted to Break Math

In 1897, the State of Indiana became a national joke when it nearly redefined pi.

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED FEBRUARY 20, 2025

3.1415926535897932385.

That's pi to 20 digits. That's as far as I was able to memorize it in the ninth grade, and I've remembered it that way ever since, despite the fact that I don't recall what I had for breakfast this morning and have more than once lost my own car in a drug store parking lot.

Of course, it's hard to remember the real important stuff when you've devoted so much of your brain's real estate to remembering at least 15 more digits of an irrational number than anyone ever needs. It would have been a lot easier if Mrs. Heiderman hadn't challenged us to memorize it in the first place, and it would have been even easier if pi was a much easier number.

Maybe something like 3.2.

Edwin Goodwin was a rural doctor living outside of Evansville in the late 1800s. He was also an amateur mathematician and a fervent listener to the voice of God. Goodwin had been trying to solve the ancient problem of “squaring the circle”, when he claimed that a Divine Providence had whispered in his ear to provide the answer.

The true value of pi needed to be changed. The true value of pi was actually 3.2.

The revelation had come to Goodwin in March of 1888. Nine years later, Goodwin had delivered his new mathematical understanding to the statehouse.

Posey County is a small place even now, but it was a lot smaller in 1896. Located in the furthest flung fringes of the southwest corner of the state, the shape of Posey County seems to be reaching for something in the distance or maybe trying to snap free from the state altogether.

There weren't a lot of people living in Posey County in 1897, but one of them was Taylor Record, a newly elected representative looking to make a splash in Indianapolis. Another was Edwin Goodwin, the mathematical prophet with a divine copyright on pi. It didn't take long for the two to team up.

Record's first action at the statehouse was to introduce House Bill No. 246, an attempt to legislatively redefine pi as 3.2, and by some unknown mechanism, to allow Indiana exclusive use of this new mathematical interpretation. The bill was introduced at the statehouse on January 18, 1897. It was treated very seriously. You can read the whole thing if you want to:

The bill was referred first to the Committee on Swamplands for some reason or another, but the Committee on Swamplands sent it back, thinking that it belonged more appropriately with the Committee on Education. So that's where it went, and certainly as the prognosticators expected, that's where it would die.

The prognosticators were wrong. On February 2, the Committee on Education sent the bill back to the full body with the recommendation that the bill be passed as written. An excited statehouse rushed the bill through its second read, then voted to suspend its own rules in order to hasten a vote on the thing.

With 67 votes, the House passed the bill. There were no dissenting votes. House Bill 246 had passed unanimously. For not the last time, Indiana had become a punchline, and there would be no escaping the mocking that came from every other state in the Union and across the globe.

But at least there was a chance for common sense to prevail. From the statehouse, the bill moved to the Indiana Senate in order to be approved. The Senate referred it - for reasons unknown - to the Committee on Temperance, who duly considered the bill and brought it back to the Senate floor with the recommendation that the bill be passed.

The bill was a whisper away from being made law. It had the unanimous backing of the State House and a committee recommendation from the Senate. Willful ignorance and scientific denial had ruled the day and ruled it unanimously. Several layers of governmental bureaucracy had failed entirely to be persuaded by facts, logic, and common sense.

But finally, they would be persuaded by ridicule.

By the time House Bill 246 made was brought before the State Senate for a proper vote, newspaper articles from across the country had made their way to Indianapolis. In each of them, without exception, Indiana was the butt of every joke. Internationally, Hoosiers had been made out to be ignorant, gullible, uneducated, and unscientific. The State Senate moved for the indefinite postponement of discussion on the bill, and the motion carried. The bill was, mercifully, killed.

Whether or not anything was learned from the episode is a matter of debate.