Purdue University mathematics professor Clarence Waldo was only at the Indiana Statehouse to lobby for the school during budget talks in February of 1897. That’s when he happened to witness House Bill 246 – to legally change the value of the number pi to 3.2 – pass its third and final reading in the General Assembly’s lower house. //

Waldo resolved to make sure the Senate didn’t make the same embarrassing mistake, privately coaching several senators on how to speak against the bill. At the same time, newspapers outside the state were picking up the story, correctly making fun of Indiana legislators for being so easily hoodwinked.

Sen. Orrin Hubbel of Elkhart County took the lead in trying to kill the bill when it reached the floor of the Senate, calling it “utter folly” and stating he and his colleagues “might as well try to legislate water to run up hill as to establish mathematical truth by law,” according to a report in the Indianapolis Journal. 

Thankfully, the bill died before coming to a vote, but that was due more to Waldo’s lobbying and the negative publicity than any principled opposition based on basic mathematical knowledge.