Pi Day is on March 14, and any day that combines fun, education, and pie is a day worth celebrating! Pi, also known by the Greek letter “π,” is a constant value used in math that represents the ratio of a circumference of a circle to its diameter, which is just about 3.14….15…9265359… (and so on). Not only that, but the fourteenth of March is also Albert Einstein’s birthday, so all together it’s nothing short of a mathematician’s delight.
HISTORY OF NATIONAL PI DAY
To learn about pi, we need to go back a few thousand years and learn about this elusive number. The value of pi was first calculated by Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 BC), one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient world.
However, it was first baptized with the Greek letter as its name when William Oughtred called it as such in his works dating back to 1647, later embraced by the scientific community when Leonhard Euler used the symbol in 1737.
But how did Pi Day end up in a country-wide phenomenon? For that, we need to travel to the Exploratorium in 1988 San Francisco, where it was thought up by physicist Larry Shaw.
Shaw linked March 14 with the first digits of pi (3.14) in order to organize a special day to bond the Exploratorium staff together, where he offered fruit pies and tea to everyone starting at 1:59 pm, the following three digits of the value. A few years later, after Larry’s daughter, Sara, remarked that the special date was also the birthday of Albert Einstein, they started celebrating the life of the world-famous scientist.
Pi Day became an annual Exploratorium tradition that still goes on today, and it didn’t take long for the idea to grow exponentially, hitting a peak on March 12, 2009, when the U.S Congress declared it a national holiday.
Now, celebrated by math geeks all around the circumference of the world, Pi Day became a pop culture phenomenon, with several places partaking in the activities, antics, observations and all the pie eating they can.
TRADITIONS OF THE DAY
Pi Day gives math enthusiasts the opportunity to celebrate their love for numbers and the enigma that is the infinite pi.
Since 1988, the day has been celebrated at the San Francisco Exploratorium. The first celebration was organized by Larry Shaw, who worked as a physicist at the center. The staff participated by marching around the exploratorium and consuming fruit pies. This tradition has lived on since. Math lovers talk about math, host get-togethers, and have pi recital competitions. In schools, teachers arrange scavenger hunts, pie bake sales, and even Pi Day workouts to stimulate more interest in learning and practicing mathematics. Those folks who work in food marketing also love to get involved, so keep your eyes peeled for some discounts, deals, and freebies on pies, it’s going to be an extra tasty day.
BY THE NUMBERS
14th – of March is also Albert Einstein’s birthday
31.4 million – the world record held by Emma Haruka Iwao for calculating the most accurate value of pi.
4 – the number of months it took Emma Haruka Iwao to calculate the most accurate value of pi.
70,000 – the number of decimal places of pi memorized by Rajveer Meena in 2015.
10 – the number of hours it took Rajveer Meena to make the world record.
3.125 – the original number used for pi by the Babylonians.
22.4 trillion – the number of digits calculated by Swiss scientist Peter Trueb, using a computer.
24 – the number of hard drives on the computer used by Peter Trueb for calculating pi.
700,000 – the number of years it will take to recite the 22 trillion digits of pi.
15,000 – the number of digits of pi memorized by Mark Umile in the U.S.
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