FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for November 02, 2021

Who was the first person, cafeteria lady? The principal?

I had to work out the area of the surface of a sphere today. It’s 4*pi*r^2.

Is there a force-field around her hand in last panel?

Trig or treat. Okay, a few days late.

Pie are squared unless they are normal pies!

How about Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam and spam with a little rat in it!?!?

I like this strip for the geek content – normally it’s provided by Jason.

My nephew, Jason, has Pi memorized to 80 places. Don’t ask me why.

In the Bible, there is a description of a circular well cover. The Hebrews, not being great mathematicians, didn’t realize that you only need one measurement to describe a circle: either the diameter or the circumference, so they gave both.

One of the definitions of Pi is the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter. If you do this with the Bible measurements, you get exactly 3. So this led some Bible literalists to believe Pi is 3 and there was even a state legislature that passed a law stating that Pi is 3 based on the Biblical “evidence.” Wagon wheels in this state would have been hexagonal and then it would depend on which spoke you measured for the diameter.

However, in this case, the Bible could literally be true. Suppose the well cover was bulged out into the third dimension? In fact, let’s conjecture that it is a hemisphere. The distance measured across the hemisphere is half of a full sphere, namely half the circumference of its base. So in this case, Pi = 2. Clearly if “real” PI > 3 and this three-dimensional Pi = 2. There is some curved cover somewhere between flat and hemispherical where Pi = 3.

This strip should have been run on March 14th.

I find it hard to believe that Peter would consider it torture to eat pie.

This strip should be run on March 14.

That’s very pious of her.

Chicken Pot Pie. My three favorite things.

Now how did 0.14159 of a person ask that?

Trigonometry does not use pi. It consists entirely of triangular measurements. Just saying.

Now I want pie.

Popular food, yes.

pie are round, cake are square.

You’ve got to be a tad superannuated to remember when “pizza pie” was a descriptor. (See MAD Magazine #40 July, 1958.) In New Jersey during the 1950s it was “tomato pie.” Ah, the memories.

She just subtracted Peter’s appetite.