Yes it does have to be pi because that’s the formula for the volume of a cylinder. If you take a simple, cylindrical glass or container and measure it and apply the formula with pi, you’ll see that you’ll get the correct volume of the container. If you just want your kids to calculate a random x that’s 5* 10 *10 *10 just tell them to do that, don’t give them a made up formula, it’s not that difficult.
Mathematically, no, it does not. We make up the definitions. If you wanted to see what the consequences of a, I don’t know, 5-dimensional universe with Pi set to 5.65 were, you can do that. These are scribbles on pages, there is literally nothing stopping you.
Academically, what’s stopping you is whether these calculations are useful. The only problem I see here is that it’s kind of misleading to imply to someone that Pi is something it conventionally isn’t. But even then, I think I’d respect the mathematician who could recognize Pi as a symbolic name for, usually, one particular transcendental constant a little bit more than one who refused to even entertain the idea. Like, imagination is important to mathematics, too.
And to be clear, “let Pi = 3.14” is also incorrect. It is closer than 5, but it is still infinitely wrong.
[edit] And also, I was imagining this question was for a younger audience. Reading it again, I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going on up there.
Yes it does have to be pi because that’s the formula for the volume of a cylinder. If you take a simple, cylindrical glass or container and measure it and apply the formula with pi, you’ll see that you’ll get the correct volume of the container. If you just want your kids to calculate a random x that’s 5* 10 *10 *10 just tell them to do that, don’t give them a made up formula, it’s not that difficult.
Mathematically, no, it does not. We make up the definitions. If you wanted to see what the consequences of a, I don’t know, 5-dimensional universe with Pi set to 5.65 were, you can do that. These are scribbles on pages, there is literally nothing stopping you.
Academically, what’s stopping you is whether these calculations are useful. The only problem I see here is that it’s kind of misleading to imply to someone that Pi is something it conventionally isn’t. But even then, I think I’d respect the mathematician who could recognize Pi as a symbolic name for, usually, one particular transcendental constant a little bit more than one who refused to even entertain the idea. Like, imagination is important to mathematics, too.
And to be clear, “let Pi = 3.14” is also incorrect. It is closer than 5, but it is still infinitely wrong.
[edit] And also, I was imagining this question was for a younger audience. Reading it again, I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going on up there.