Happy Pi Day. Indiana once tried to define pi as 3.2. The bill almost passed.

The Indiana state legislature once took up a bill to define pi as 3.2. It almost passed.

March 14 -- or, if you'd prefer, 3.14 -- is the informal holiday celebrating everyone's favorite irrational number, pi.

The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, pi is a number that famously extends forever without repeating, and has scored an elite spot in pop culture's superficial appreciation of mathematics.

All that could have been different, however, if the efforts of one Edward J. Goodwin of Indiana had succeeded -- or if a mathematics professor hadn't stopped him.

A rural physician in the late 19th Century, Goodwin dabbled in mathematics and came to believe he had solved several of the world's most vexing mathematical problems.