Today is one of those confusing days — it’s Pi Day, but it’s not about pies, it’s about the most studied number in mathematics. Even if you’re not aware of it, the number pi is fundamental to our understanding of geometry and is a vital part of architecture and construction of all sorts of things like arches and bridges — even the Pyramids.
Pi Day is celebrated internationally on March 14 and is observed by math enthusiasts and schools all over the world. The first Pi Day celebration was held at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988, with the staff, and public, marching in circles and then consuming fruit pies. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology often mails its acceptance (and rejection) letters to be delivered to prospective students on Pi Day.
Throughout history, there has been a lot of effort to determine pi more accurately and to understand its nature. Pi’s decimal representation never ends or repeats. Pi is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be written as the ratio of two integers. It is also a transcendental number, meaning that there is no polynomial with rational coefficients for which pi is a root. The implication is that virtually any string of numbers you can imagine is somewhere in pi. And I guess it’s just inevitable that March 14 is the birthday of the Nobel Prize winning scientist Albert Einstein.
Lots of things can be said about Pi….
The symbol for pi was introduced by William Jones, a Welsh mathematician in 1706.
Since the exact value of pi can never be calculated, we can never find the totally accurate area or circumference of a circle.
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 one of the seven wonders of the world.
Pi wasn’t always known as pi. Before the 1700s, people referred to the number we know as pi as “the quantity which when the diameter is multiplied by it, yields the circumference.” Thank goodness someone came up with pi.
Givenchy sells a men’s cologne with the name PI. The company markets the product as capable of enhancing the attractiveness of intelligent and visionary men.
March 14 or 3/14 is celebrated as Pi Day because 3.14 are the first digits of pi.
As I’ve mention in previous posts, in recent years, Pi’s usefulness has been challenged in recent years. A growing number believe that tau (which amounts to 2π) is better suited to circle calculations. For example, you can multiply tau with the radius of a circle to calculate its circumference more intuitively. But Pi is loved by a lot of math enthusiasts and we’ll probably continue to celebrate it. After all, I can’t Imagine you favorite Pizza place having a Pizza Tau Day special instead of a Pizza Pi Day special….
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