We're not talking about a collection of fruit, yeast, and sugar here. No, we're talking about something far more fundamental to the psyche of the average bear. We're talking about the circumference of a circle!
That number that doesn't have a finite amount of numbers after the decimal point yet we still refer to it as a known entity? That's Pi. It's most often shortened to 3.14, for rational reasons, even though the number itself is irrational. Some bright light in a computer somewhere has now calculated the value of Pi out to more than 1 trillion digits past the decimal. That calculation probably took a bit of time and electricity, but never mind.
What we're here to talk about today, on March 14, is Pi Day. Yep, if you put the number instead of March, you get 3 14. We commonly write that as 3/14 (or 14/3 if you're in England-inspired countries that didn't declare their independence in 1776 — although the joke's on them because technically, they don't get to celebrate Pi Day because they never write the date that way).Why do we have Pi Day? Well, it was made out of whole cloth only in the late 20th Century, so it's not like the ancient Greeks had a festival for it anything. Pi Day was first celebrated officially in 1989, in San Francisco. (The Exploratorium still trumpets this celebration every year, by the way.)
What do we do on Pi Day? Well, most of us probably do nothing. The wily among us get together for circle-measuring parties. The film-obsessed among us watch the movie Pi. The literate among us might get together to talk about Life of Pi, although that book had a main character named Pi and didn't have all that much to do with mathematics, except the ones needed to describe how that main character kept himself alive in a small for so long with the dreaded Richard Parker.
Organizers of Pi Day — and there are a few — point to Leonhard Euler as the first popular adherent to the symbol invented by William Jones, a Welsh mathematician, in the 18th Century. Organizers also point to the need to discuss Pi as if it's a matter of world importance. (I suppose it is, in that you can't really go on with living in the technologically advanced world of today without seeing wheels in all manner of places and atmospheres and stopping, at one point or another, to wonder, "Now how far around is that circle?" Thanks to Jones, Euler, and a whole host of mathematicians and mathematics teachers and fans who followed, you don't have to do the calculations yourself. All you have to remember is 3.14.
Sweet, just like pie.
P.S.: More here: The Amazing History of Pi.
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