Today is Pi Day, which is not to be confused with Pie Day, although that one does sound delicious.
If you're unfamiliar with it (which I am doubting is the case with anyone in our community), Pi is the constant used to calculate the area of a circle, as in pi times the radius squared, but it appears all over other parts of mathematics. Pi is also irrational. The decimal expansion never ends and never repeats, so any number of decimal places we write out is an approximation. But each decimal digit we know makes any computation involving pi more precise.
Every year on March 14, the world celebrates Pi Day to recognize the mathematical constant. It defines as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter and the value for Pi is 3.14. It is fair to note, though, that the day looks like 3.14 for those that write dates in the month-then-day format, but that is rarely used outside of the Americas. To make it a little more fun, July 22 is also considered Pi Day by many but is also referred to as Pi Approximation Day due to the date being 22/7, which is an approximation of pi. To be fair, one could say that both March 14 and July 22 are Pi Approximation Days. Either way, it feels like a good reason to celebrate Pi Day twice a year and a good excuse, at least for me, to eat pie.
Want to know some more fun facts about Pi?
- The symbol for Pi has been in use for over 250 years. The symbol was introduced by William Jones, a Welsh mathematician, in 1706. The symbol was made popular by the mathematician Leonhard Euler.
- The record for reciting the most number of decimal places of Pi was achieved by Rajveer Meena at VIT University, Vellore, India on 21 March 2015. He was able to recite 70,000 decimal places. To maintain the sanctity of the record, Rajveer wore a blindfold throughout the duration of his recall, which took an astonishing 10 hours! Learn more.
- Pi is actually a part of Egyptian mythology. People in Egypt believed that the pyramids of Giza were built on the principles of pi. The vertical height of the pyramids have the same relationship with the perimeter of their base as the relationship between a circle’s radius and its circumference. The pyramids are phenomenal structures and are one of the seven wonders of the world.
- There is an entire language made from the number Pi. But how is that possible? Well, some people loved pi enough to invent a dialect based on it. In “Pi-lish” the number of letters in each word match the corresponding digit of pi. This first word has three letters, the second has one letter, the third has four letters, and so on. This language is more popular than you might think. Software engineer Michael Keith wrote an entire book, called Not a Wake in this language.
- The calculation of pi is a stress test for a computer. It works just like a digital cardiogram since it indicates the level of activity within the computer’s processor.
While I am quite the equal opportunist when it comes to pies (mmm, pie), my toss-up would be between apple pie and pizza (pizza is a pie, right?!). The real question, though, is what is your favorite kind of pie?
