[jmfayard]

The Bible uses PI = 3 and that's good enough for me

> And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

1 Kings 7:23 King James

[llimos]

Actually...

In the original Hebrew version of I Kings, in that verse the word for 'circumference' is traditionally written differently to how it is read (there are instances of this kind of thing all over the Bible [1])

Each letter in Hebrew has a numeric value [2].

As written: קוה = 111

As read: קו = 106

Ratio between them: 111/106 = 1.04717...

Which is exactly the ratio between the reported value of pi (3) and the real value to 4 decimal places (3.1415)

So maybe they did have a better idea than "3". The 3 in the verse is to keep it simple, but there's a clue there for those who want the real number.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qere_and_Ketiv

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria

[midasuni]

It was round, was it a perfect circle?

How many significant figures was it to? How accurate was construction and measuring techniques? 9.7 diameter would be reasonable as “10”, as would 30.47 being “30”, with values being well within 5%.

[jonatron]

Should've been at 7:22 King James

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

you mean 7:21 given the circumstances

[Timwi]

Let's call it an even 7:20

[doliveira]

Funny how that's how described in the Pentateuch's tabernacle: God sends detailed instructions about how many buttons (?) the priest's clothing should have but when it comes to PI "yeah, 3 is good enough"

[quickthrower2]

Unless nautical cubits are different from land based cubits

[frumiousirc]

They are wetter.