[Squeakland] Discovering Pi in Squeak

[Bert Freudenberg]

On May 30, 2007, at 19:02 , subbukk wrote:

> On Wednesday 30 May 2007 5:35 pm, Alan Kay wrote:
>> Hi --
>> For example, you can make a big circle with a turn by 1 and sum the
>> forwards, and also remember max y and min y to get the diameter. This
>> will give you a pretty good value for Pi.
> Unfortunately, what they will discover is the number programmed  
> into the Float
> class initialize method :-). I wanted to explore a method without  
> built in
> bias.

I bet if they are able to trace from the "turn by" tile into the  
method where pi is actually used directly, they are able to  
understand why this is not cheating. Besides, you could use radians  
directly for turning and then pi would not be involved directly.

It's like your "blacksmith" argument - he doesn't actually need pi  
but could simply roll the wheel on the strip of metal to find the  
length. But that would be cheating because pi is built into the  
wheel, yes?

- Bert -