Circumference

Source: http://www.xkcd.com/1184/

Further comments, from Nicholas Vanserg, “Mathmanship,” The American Scientist, Vol. 46, No. 3 (1958):

In an article published a few years ago, the writer intimated with befitting subtlety that since most concepts of science are relatively simple (once you understand them), any ambitious scientist must, in self-preservation, prevent his colleagues from discovering that his ideas are simple too…

The object of… Mathmanship is to place unsuspected obstacles in the way of the pursuer until he is obliged, by a series of delays and frustrations, to give up the chase and concede his mental inferiority to the author…

[U]se a superscript as a key to a real footnote. The knowledge seeker reads that is calories and thinks, “Gee what a whale of a lot of calories,” until he reads to the bottom of the page, finds footnote 14 and says, “oh.”