"American Pi"
all rights reserved
lyric © 1997- 2005 Lawrence Mark Lesser
May be sung to the tune of Don McLean's "American Pie"


          Find, find the value of pi,   
          Starts 3 point 1 4 1 5 9.
          Good ol' boys gave it a try,
          But the decimal never dies, the decimal never dies......

In the Bible we do see the circle ratio appears as three,
Or a little more....
That genius Archimedes found with polygons, an upper bound
Of 22 sevenths for sure!
The Chinese got it really keen: three-five-five over one thirteen!
More joined the action with arctan series and continued fractions.
In the 1700's, my oh my,the English coined the symbol π,
Then Lambert showed it was a lie to look for rational pi.

He started singing   ..........   

          Find, find the value of pi
          Twice 11 over 7 is a mighty fine try
          A good ol' fraction you might hope to supply,
          But the decimal never dies, the decimal never dies.

Late 1800's, Lindemann shared why a circle can't be squared
But some folks tried anyway--
Like the Indiana doctor who said pi was 4 or 3.2
And thought his proof should be a law someday.
The Indiana congressmen
Discussed his paper there and then
A bill got through the House by a vote unanimous!
But in the end the statesmen sighed, "It's not for us to decide,"
So the bill was left to die
Like the quest for rational pi.

They started singing ........

          Find, find the value of pi
          Buffon's needle popped the bubble of that ol' doctor's try
          A good ol' fraction could not be supplied
          'Cause the decimal never dies, the decimal never dies.

That doctor's pi in the sky dreams may not look so extreme
'Cause we long believed
Deductive systems could be complete and there was one true geometry.
But now there's more we see
In these computer times, we test the best machines to find
pi to a trillion places that so far lack pattern's traces.
It's great when we can truly see math as human history--
That adds curiosity......    easy as pi!

Let's all try singing.....      

          Find, find the value of pi
          3 point 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3 5 8 9...
          A good ol' fraction you might hope to define
          But the decimal never dies, the decimal never dies.