Pi (π) day

I know you’ve probably all heard of Pi day (whether it was at school or outside), but do you know its history?

Let’s start from the beginning. Pi, often represented by the lower-case Greek letter π, is one of the most well-known mathematical constants. It symbolizes the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.  For any circle, the distance around the edge is a little more than three times the distance across. Typing π into a calculator and pressing ENTER will yield the result 3.141592654, not because this value is exact, but because a calculator’s display is often limited to 10 digits.  Pi is actually an irrational number (a decimal with no end and no repeating pattern) that is most often approximated to the decimal 3.14 or the fraction 22/7. 

Now that we know what the number Pi is, what is Pi day? Well, Pi day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant Pi, happening every year on March the 14th (3·14), which also happens to be on Albert Einstein’s birthday. This has been going on since 1988, when physicist Larry Shaw organized the first large-scale celebration of Pi at the San Francisco Exploratorium where he worked. Him and his co-workers marched around a “Pi shrine,” a circular brass plaque, a total of 3.14 times, while singing Happy Birthday to Einstein. People all around the world have celebrated Pi Day in their own way. At the school, the math department comes up with different activities and games related to numbers. Due to all these traditions, the US established Pi Day as an official national holiday in 2009. A few years later, in 2014, the entire month of march was declared “Pi Month”. The next year, “Super Pi Day” was announced on March the 14th (3·14·15).

If you want to learn more about Pi and Pi Day, and do fun Pi quizzes, you can go to https://www.piday.org/ and find everything Pi-related.

Happy Pi Month! What are your Pi Day plans?

Reference:

https://www.piday.org/