Happy Pi Day!
I was reminded this morning that today is “Pi Day.” March 14 = 3/14 = 3.14 = pi. Roughly.
How could I have forgotten?
I have always loved pi. I remember the day I learned about pi. It was the same day I learned about negative numbers – a banner day, mathematically speaking, for a kid with a blackboard and a big brother who was a math major.
So many other numbers just seem to conform. They are predictable. You know exactly what you’re getting. But pi is an anomaly. It is incredibly significant in the fabric of things. You need it to figure out a circle, for goodness sake. But it stands outside that metaphorical circle and defies anyone to really figure it out. You can know what it is, but you can never know IT. It can’t even be memorized. It is irrational, and proud of it. It is transcendental, mathematically and metaphorically. Among numbers it is King. Or Queen.
Pi is actually
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679 8214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196 4428810975665933446128475648233786783165271201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273 724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609...
… and on infinitelyand without pattern. Take that.
So, if I’d been thinking, I might have made note of today at 1:59am plus 26 and a half seconds as “pi moment.” I wonder if anyone paid attention in 1592 when the date was 3/14/1592 – a full on, “in-your-face” pi day.
From wikipedia:
π (sometimes written pi) is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean space; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle’s area to the square of its radius. It is approximately equal to 3.141593 in the usual decimal notation. (snip)Many formulae from mathematics, science, and engineering involve π, which is one of the most important mathematical and physical constants.[5]
π is an irrational number, which means that its value cannot be expressed exactly as a fraction m/n, where m and n are integers. Consequently, its decimal representation never ends or repeats. It is also a transcendental number, which implies, among other things, that no finite sequence of algebraic operations on integers (powers, roots, sums, etc.) can be equal to its value; proving this was a late achievement in mathematical history and a significant result of 19th century German mathematics. Throughout the history of mathematics, there has been much effort to determine π more accurately and to understand its nature; fascination with the number has even carried over into non-mathematical culture.
The Greek letter π, often spelled out pi in text, was adopted for the number from the Greek word for perimeter “περίμετρος”, first by William Jones in 1707, and popularized by Leonhard Euler in 1737.
So, now what? How does one celebrate this special day? Before you just go the safe route and march around in a circle reciting digits, check out this web page which lists all sorts of fun ways to celebrate Pi Day. This is not a time to hold back your inner geek. Let it out of the closet and go for a run for pi miles, bake a pie, rent the movie Pi, or have a pi-zza at 3:14.
And as if this was not enough to get your inner mathemetician all a-twitter, you can raise a glass of pi-napple juice and give a toast to Albert Einstein whose birthday was today.
So, Happy Pi Day to you all. I’m going to celebrate by eating something out of my pi plate. Yes, I really have one just like this:
Pi minute is coming up here! 3:14:1:59
March 14 at 1:59.
Our school always had a pi eating contest and a big shout out at 1:59. It was fun.
and if you really get into it, 26 seconds!
You must check out ScienceBlogs’ annual Pi Day Pie Contest. Lots of yummy pies and other goodies!
Loganberry pi.
Apricot pi, peach pi,cherry pi.
thank you for the pi lesson AKM. i believe i was unconscious in the back of the classroom that day.
Oh I am with #3 Vern D.
Not many people know of logan berries, and to have a pi with them is extra special!!
Also a Happy Pi Day to AK Pi !!!!
Without an iota of arrogance ( i swear ! ) I share that since an early age I have scored very well in IQ tests. Teachers loved me. Fellow students hated me. ( and sometimes waited in poorly lit corners of the playground just for the opportunity to wail on me. ) I was ( am) a nerd wrapped in a geek wrapped in a short, shy little conundrum .
But ! Math was the one thing that never, ever made sense to me. To this day it makes my brain hurt. String theory and theories of multiple dimensions? Sure. I’m all over that. But PI and/or Avogadro’s number and what the heck that means to to the world ?? My brain …..eeet yust won’t go there. ( anyone else resonating with that feel ? )
But, nonetheless – Happy Pi Day to You and Yours ! ( beyond the obvious ” pie” — what do you bring to a Pi Day dinner??)
In Contact, by Carl Sagan, God hides a secret message in the zillionth digits of pi. Pi shows order in the universe and proof of God. Not in the dumbed-down movie (which is nevertheless terrific), but in the novel.
In Japan, March 14th has been known as “White Day” since 1978.
The Japanese have taken the concept of Valentine’s Day and extended it even farther.
After WWII ended, February 14th became a day when Japanese women could take initiative and bestow a gift on the significant men in their lives (not necessarily romantic relationships).
Older Japanese gift-giving traditions are quite complex and involve reciprocity, balance of value based on social position, and multiple transactions over time that help to establish, maintain, and measure the individual’s relative social status over long-term relationships.
Therefore, there was a “lack of emotional completeness” felt on a national scale when Valentine’s became a popular, yet one-way, expression of affection.
At least that’s the way some folks in marketing for the Japanese National Confectionary Consortium put it when they came up with the idea of White Day, sparked by an indiviual at a company called Manseido who successfully marketed an increase in marshmallow sales based on this concept.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Day
March 14th is now the day that men are expected to reciprocate with similar gifts, thus making the gift-giving cycle come full circle.
π in deed.
In actuality, a Japanese man who suddenly brings home chocolates from work after Valentin’s risks an entire year of domestic Arctic conditions. So they often either sought to return the chocolate to the store it came from (in Japan the stores wrap these gifts with distinctive paper), or the deeper thinking ones would wait a month or so and bring the chocolate home as a gift for the wife, avoiding Arctic conditions and perhaps getting some snuggles in the process. White Day legitimized this practice, and I can attest to it’s effectiveness since I married into a Japanese family during the height of the White Day boom.
The marketing executive who thought this up is truly worthy of Mad Men status and deserving of corporate legend, but alas, even searching the Japanese literature I cannot find this person’s name. I am pretty sure it’s a guy, but it would be even more legendary if it turns to be a woman….
Happy Pi Day! Geek holidays are the best kind.
Happy Pi Day to Alaska Pi!
Love the plate.
BuffaloGal – you aren’t the only one who’s brain hurt from math.
Well, Happy Pi day all.
March 14, 1592 at 6:53am 00:53.97 seconds was the true Pi moment…
Oddly enough, the extent and weirdness of pi is just one of those things I am willing to take on faith. Don’t even try to prove it to me!
Also, too, sweet potato pie.
“So many other numbers just seem to conform. They are predictable. You know exactly what you’re getting. But pi is an anomaly.”
People too. This is why we love our Alaska Pi!
UgaVic, I don’t know loganberries, but how about lingonberries?
Also. too, everyone, my Grandpa Linus, of blessed memory, made the world’s finest cherry pi and taught me the song, “Can she bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, billy boy?…” I still use his cookbooks and recipes scrawled in his spidery hand and heart-shaped cake pans and mixing bowls… Wonderful baker, my Grandpa Linus, among many other talents: a butcher, a baker, a boat-builder, a fly fisherman, and a saint for all those years with my Norwegian grandmother, also of blessed memory…who was, er, fiercely independent, strong-willed, and proud of her Viking ancestry. Not the easiest woman in the world to get along with, but I love them both still with all my heart.
Kimosabe @ 7, loving me some Carl Sagan, of blessed memory, also, too…
Hey BigSlick, Every day is a good day for Chocolate, just sayin’…
A friend in London says it is (was?) Mother’s Day there today. Who knew? So Happy Mum’s Day, mudflats mums! Also, too.
*passing the blueberry and cherry pies with lattice top crusts, the apple pie with streusel topping, and a regional treat… key lime pie*
LOVE the Pi plate!
It’s also Einstein’s 131th birthday. Celebrate with pistachio ice cream?
Best Pi I’ve ever eaten was in Montana (on our way to Alaska): It was huckleberry-sour cream pi. I can still taste it….
huckleberries! Oh, does that take me way back!
Moon River, my huckleberry friends?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcXiJibBloU&feature=related
When I lived in Sitka we used to take our little boat out to this awesome Little island (too small for bears). The beaches were rock and shell (black and white all mixed together). We would spend a couple of days camped and feasting on high bush blueberries and huckleberries in the fall. I miss that. Blueberry patches are a well kept secret where we live. And, of course there is always the danger of a bear sneaking up on you….
Anybody else like one of my favo(u)rite picture books, Blueberries for Sal? Berry pickin’ and bear-y pickin’.
For the *True Geeks* Tm there is always e.
(in case my html didn’t work that should be an italicized lower case e.)
Sometimes called Euler’s number. It’s definition is quite a mouthful:
e is the unique number (a) such that the value of the derivative of the exponential function f (x) = a^x at the point x=0 is exactly 1.
One could argue it touches our lives even more intimately than pi because it is the “limit” of continuously compounded interest. 2.71828…
It is also irrational and has broad application in mathematics and science.
Its inverse (1/e) is also referred to as the “natural logarithm”.
Apologies to Buffalogal in advance. However, I should point out that I too struggled with mathematics for a long time until at some undefined point in grad school it all came together. I guess it was because I had to use it and once I knew that, I could always contextualize it to the application.
Now I am going to go and have a cookie.
Krubozumo Nyankoye: How about some “pi” instead? *passing you the blueberry and cherry pies with lattice top crusts, the apple pie with streusel topping, and a regional treat… key lime pie*
Krubozumo Nyankoye @22 – I was following you at ” have a cookie” . But beyond that ? Argh !
too funny
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/dogs-dressed-as-superhero_n_492104.html#s73115
UgaVic, MUYS, fawnskin mudpuppy and Moose Pucky-
Thank you for remembering me on Pi day!
(Is a name chosen partly to celebrate the real pi and partly to celebrate my serendipitous relationship to pi-ness. )
I had some homemade pizza pi today. (My hubby is a great cook!). Yummy.
Pizza pi! Cheesy-tomato-ey-yummy goodness.
Happy makes a mean broccoli onion mushroom bacon cheddar swiss (quiche) pi, also, too. But supper’s over, I’m finished with dessert, and tomorrow is a school day. Full dark here now, so off to sleep.
Laila tov, everyone. Good night and sweet dreams.
A slice of apple for me, please!
Application of mathematics to politics:
Palin as POTUS = Pi in the sky
I do think it’s rather ironic that 3/14 is Einstein’s birthday. (It’s also mine, but I’m hardly a math/physics genius.)
thatcrowwoman – I see that you have retired so you won’t see this until tomorrow but I have to say thank you for all the pies. In general I am not overly fond of pie but I do like pumpkin which no one seems to have mentioned. My grandmother also taught me how to make a pretty mean pie crust from scratch when I was about 12 years old. About the only pie I really enjoy enough to make for myself is cherry. Go figure.
Pi of course is part of my everyday life though usually it is hidden in a thicket of other things. e is also embedded in my everyday life as are the other three numbers which seem to have nearly supernatural importance. Note that I said nearly.
Buffalogal -
Let me just say this, if I try to explain something to someone and they don’t understand my explanation, I try a different explanation. I do not assume that they don’t understand because they are instrinsically limited, on the contrary, I assume my explanation has been in some way inadequate.
In my opinion that is how you should view your inaptitude for math. That is also one of my contrarian viewpoints respecting education in general. We tend to accept the idea that individuals “fail” to understand things, but never consider whether in fact the things they do not understand have really been taught, or explained in a manner that could be understood. So take heart.
It does not have to be math, anything at all that presents a challenge can be gotten at simply by confronting it head on.
Should we now take the conversation in the direction of how fractions of Pi translate into the classical ratios of trigonometry and analytical geometry?
And then we can explore the algebra of combining ratios to derive polar coordinates.
@32 KN: Oh, why not go straight to e^(ix) = cos x + i sin x, whence
e^(i*pi) = 1 ? Linking three of my favorites.
Second application of mathematics to politics:
Palin = Cow Pi
———————————-
Third application of mathematics to politics:
‘08 presidential election = Bye-bye, Miss American Pi
Final application of mathematics to politics:
Palin = Pi in her face is worth two in the bush divided by irrational numbers multiplied by infinity.
****With apologies to Pi, e, all the other “nearly supernatural numbers” (Thanks, Krubozumo. I like that concept!)
What man does not know
Or has not thought of
Wanders in the night
Through the labyrinth of the mind
–Goethe
How many more “nearly supernatural” concepts are out there wandering? (h/t Krubozumo for phrase in quotes).
Strangelet @ #33
I was heading there, but you scooped me.
Lee323 -
One that springs to mind is gravity.
Krubozumo-
Goethe’s quote resonated with Calabi-Yau spaces and the eleven (or more?) hidden dimensions in String Theory for me….
Wandering through the labyrinth of the mind is the same as wandering through the labyrinth of the universe. Our minds are made of the same “star dust” that formed the galaxies….and the language of the universe is mathematics.
It’s only a matter of time before another Einstein wanders on to the true “Theory of Everything” in which all the nearly supernatural numbers/concepts make perfect sense, including gravity.
Lee323 -
Much as I enjoy reading about the various string theories and M theory etc. I have to remain a little skeptical about anything that would never be empiracally verifyable. I had them in mind when I mentioned gravity because according to what I have read the quantum/relativistic properties of gravity can be resolved by at least some subsets of the many dimensional theories.
In my limited understanding though that still does not explain in any sense that I can understand what gravity *IS*. I also hold out the possibility that like the nearly supernatural numbers, the TOE is intractable and the intellectual journey to understand the universe is an infinite regression. On the bright side that means very long term job security, at least for theoretical physicists.
Cheers,
Yes. Gravity for all its apparent ordinary effects in our “macro” life is actually an enigma and has been the central problem in attempts to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics….but String/”M” Theories have come closer to integrating gravity in a unified theory (with a vibrational string pattern which matches the property of the graviton).
I’m not a theoretical physicist either, but am intensely interested in cosmology. I tend to wax eloquent in the wee hours of the night when skepticism is at its lowest ebb……It is then that the specter of a universe composed of a symphony of vibrating strings with hidden dimensions is so irresistible as to supplant the pedestrian and concrete in my mind. Haha. As for when a “TOE” will emerge? Maybe never, but I believe most think it could be decades or centuries. The current theories will probably bear little resemblance to any final theories.
Cheers, yourself.
Lee323 -
One of the things that still troubles me about gravity is how it can interact with light – If gravity is a function of mass and photons are “massless” particles?
It is my understanding of course that the mass element of gravity is actually an empirical means of quantifying the curvature of space and hence even massless particles fall under its influence.
I too find the “music of the strings” seductive.
Here’s to the wee hours…
@ 33 onwards…
When it comes to “String Theory”, “M Theory”, et al, I am perfectly ‘comfortable’ with the discussions and explanations given by the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson. IOW, I do not *have* to completely ‘understand’ them [at the 'primary'-level] to accept them as having (provable, at some point) validity and, therefore, as their being, even now [*before* irrefutable proof], factual.
It’s the concept I can ‘handle’…not the minute ‘detail’ of what makes “the concept”, so. Once the discussion and/or explanation goes into sine-this and cosine-that, and to-the-power-of-this and the-exponential-of-that, I glaze over into sheer and utter Lostville. [Does that make sense?]
Although I’m mechanically minded, I’ve never been good at, nor found the least bit of write-home-about-it excitement in, mathematics. [I will, however, sometimes --not often!-- puzzle over a problem for hours and get inordinately happy when I've (finally) figured out the 'why' and 'where for' of the correct answer.] I get excited for those who find excitement in math, though – it’s a joy for me to see someone pursue what they love.
My poor son, bless his heart, has a severe learning disability: Dyscalculus. He, no matter *how* it is explained, *how* it is presented to him, CANNOT make heads nor tails sense out of *any* mathematics (or *any* of its associated operations…like reading schedules, maps, time sheets, ‘quarter to’ on the face of a clock, diagrams, charts, and such. Oy! Try living with that! Don’t get me started…) He is an absolute whiz at seeing ‘the big picture’, though, and can -and does!- wax poetic on all manner of mundane and extraordinary things…to include String and M Theories. Quite incredible! Not to pun, but: Go figure. beth.
—-sorry – should have had a after “that” in “Try living with that!”
… Try living with that! Don’t get me started…) He is an absolute whiz at seeing ‘the big picture’, though, and can -and does!- wax poetic on all manner of mundane and extraordinary things…to include String and M Theories. Quite incredible! Not to pun, but: Go figure. beth. —-
Aiii ~ apparently formatting marks/instructions don’t show…ever?
Should have been: —-sorry – should have had a (without the spacing) after “that” in “Try living with that!” b.
“…should have had a [left facing carat, back slash, letter "i", right facing carat] (without the spacing) “… IOW, the end/close Italics instruction to the interwebby thingie. Even with spacing in the clarification, it doesn’t show up! I be sad. b.