value of pi and 22/7
Gregory Ewing
greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Sun Jun 19 18:25:51 EDT 2016
Ian Kelly wrote:
> Remember, the cubit was based on the length of the
> forearm, so it's not like it was a terribly precise measurement to
> begin with;
Let's not sell them short. Just because it was based on a forearm
doesn't mean they didn't have a precise standard for it, any more
than people who measure things in "feet" do it by plonking down
their own foot.
No doubt it wasn't as precise as what we have nowadays, but
it was probably a lot better than human body part variations.
> they might not have understood significant figures, but
> they probably wouldn't have been overly concerned about the difference
> between thirty and thirty-one.
If you're building something the size of a pyramid, that could
add up to quite a lot of error.
--
Greg
More information about the Python-list
mailing list