The Inexorable March of Human Progress

Archimedes used something called the method of exhaustion to calculate the value of Pi. That means, I assume, that he worked on it until he got really tired, and then took whatever number he had at that point and said, “That'll do.” And it was good enough for almost everybody when they were figuring out how much strap iron to buy for a wagon tire, or the total length of a pizza crust. Then Newton and Leibniz simultaneously invented calculus, which led to more and more accurate values. Oddly, though, both these guys have rectangular cookies named after them.