This coming Saturday, March 14th is a special day for math geeks and nerds alike – Pi Day. Pi is an irrational number that is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its radius, and it starts with 3.1415926535897…the numbers continue at random to infinity.
Pi Day was recognized by the United States House of Representatives in 2009. The earliest known official large-scale celebration of Pi Day was organized by Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium where Shaw worked as a physicist. Since then, Pi Day has been celebrated around the globe with different events, contests, and competitions, such as pie eating contests, ultimate Frisbee and hula hoop competitions, and scavenger hunts.
March 14th also happens to be the birth date of Albert Einstein, which makes this day even more distinct for math lovers out there.
This year in particular, Pi Day is extra special. At 9:26:53 AM on Saturday, this will occur: 3.14.15 9:26:53 – that’s 10 digits of pi, which only happens every hundred years.
If you are even remotely interested in celebrating with the rest of the math geeks out there, this is the year to go nuts.
To learning more about pi, get a cool t-shirt, or check out Pi Day events, go to piday.org. We especially like this awesome Pi Day rap video.
Brandon Butler at Network World has 31.4 references to Pi that you have to see
Here is a great info graphic with everything you need to know about pi – Visualizing Pi.
