The Dow Jones Industrials vs. the Dow Jones Industrial Average

Abstract

A LEGISLATOR IN one of our Middle Western states one day noticed his teen-age daughter strugglingwith that odd geometrical value expressing the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle, frequently abbreviated to 3.1416, but more exactly written as 3.1415926, and usually designated as Pi. To him the use of this cumbersome value was nothing more than another preposterous example of the impractical scholarship foisted upon innocent high school students by starry-eyed academicians. Inspired to a crusading fervor, he determined to win the undying gratitude of the schoolchildren in his state by correcting this abuse and forthwith introduced a bill into the legislature providing that Pi should be altered to three exactly, in place of the former value of 3.1415926. The bill was first referred to the Committee on Weights and Standards, where it received favorable consideration and a recommendation for passage, some of the legislators evidently being under the impression that its purpose was to regulate the size of pie cuts at public lunch counters. It was close to the point of final enactment when mathematicians and schoolteachers succeeded in making the legislators realize that the value of Pi cannot be altered by legislative fiat.