Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Today is Pi Day: 3/14, ironically it is also Albert Einstein's birthday.

The mathematical constant π, approximately equal to 3.14159, is the ratio of a circle's circumference. So if a circle's diameter is 1, its circumference is 3.14 or π.

Many schools celebrate Pi Day by having baked pies or pizza pies for their students.

The exact value of π has an infinite decimal expansion -- at 50 digits it's:
3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510

It is said that everyone's Social Security number appears someplace in the infinite expanse of Pi.

Best of all, it's the day you are free to hit anyone you know in the face with a pie!




3 comments:

Metal Mark said...

I like that last one.

Carnealian said...

And recently there was a guy that memorized pi to 12,000 places. I don't get it even once...well not before your complete explanation here.

Jim said...

mm -- if only you were nearby!!!! splat!!!!

carn -- many schools have contests, seems like memorizing random numbers to me -- St. Louis jr high school are lucky, the area code is 314 so Pi is easy for them to remember (3.14)