2008 Woodie Awards
Enough pi to go around
Today is a celebration of the never-ending number
Ellie Falaris
Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: News
For students like junior math major and math club president Tevis Tsai, today is better than Christmas.
It's March 14 - Pi Day, that special occasion when the date reads 3/14 and the mathematical constant of the same figure is elevated to sacred status.
"I don't celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah," Tsai said. "When those holidays come around, there's all this commercialization ... [and] arguing about whether we're celebrating Christmas anymore, or if we're celebrating that there's a whole bunch of sales."
For most of the year, pi is a modest part of mathematical formulas used to derive the dimensions of a circle. For instance: pi = circumference over diameter. The commonly used digits, 3.14, are only the first three of a never-ending stream of decimals.
For some, though, it's a day to indulge in pie of all sorts - cream, cherry, pepperoni - and boasting how many digits they can rattle off.
"You don't have to stress about 'What do I buy so-and-so?' or 'What do I tell so-and-so to buy me?'" Tsai said. "You get together with some friends, and you buy a pie, and you eat it together."
First celebrated in 1988 at a science museum in San Francisco, the punny tradition involves pie-eating among grade-school math classes and pi aficionados across the country.
But along with members of the university's math club, at 3:14 p.m. in the math building today, students will line up brandishing consecutive digits of pi on paper plates to receive pizza pies, followed by a cream pie fight.
"It's a great way, as math majors, to get together," said sophomore math major Kaitlyn Tuley. "We don't have that many ways to celebrate, so this gives us an excuse."
The infinitely long number has led to memorization contests of the most number of digits. A Chinese graduate student named Lu Chao broke the Guinness World record in 2006 for reciting 67,890 digits. A Japanese man, Akira Haraguchi, claims to have outdone Lu by memorizing 100,000 digits, though it has not been officially confirmed.
Tsai said he has memorized 125 digits. At the Pi Day event on the campus, math professor Denny Gulick has made a tradition of reciting up to 100.
For the lovers of pai, there's a related holiday known as Pi Approximation Day. Because Europeans abbreviate dates with the day preceding month, they celebrate July 22, or 22/7, a common approximate fraction used before the time of calculators. Pi day can also be celebrated on the 314th day of the year.
These "approximation" days provide a nice backup celebration for the university math club, in case March 14 falls on a weekend when students aren't around.
But to Tsai, these variations are characteristic of the entire field.
"One of the things that comes as a recurring theme in math is to approach things from different perspectives," he said.
efalaris@gmail.com
It's March 14 - Pi Day, that special occasion when the date reads 3/14 and the mathematical constant of the same figure is elevated to sacred status.
"I don't celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah," Tsai said. "When those holidays come around, there's all this commercialization ... [and] arguing about whether we're celebrating Christmas anymore, or if we're celebrating that there's a whole bunch of sales."
For most of the year, pi is a modest part of mathematical formulas used to derive the dimensions of a circle. For instance: pi = circumference over diameter. The commonly used digits, 3.14, are only the first three of a never-ending stream of decimals.
For some, though, it's a day to indulge in pie of all sorts - cream, cherry, pepperoni - and boasting how many digits they can rattle off.
"You don't have to stress about 'What do I buy so-and-so?' or 'What do I tell so-and-so to buy me?'" Tsai said. "You get together with some friends, and you buy a pie, and you eat it together."
First celebrated in 1988 at a science museum in San Francisco, the punny tradition involves pie-eating among grade-school math classes and pi aficionados across the country.
But along with members of the university's math club, at 3:14 p.m. in the math building today, students will line up brandishing consecutive digits of pi on paper plates to receive pizza pies, followed by a cream pie fight.
"It's a great way, as math majors, to get together," said sophomore math major Kaitlyn Tuley. "We don't have that many ways to celebrate, so this gives us an excuse."
The infinitely long number has led to memorization contests of the most number of digits. A Chinese graduate student named Lu Chao broke the Guinness World record in 2006 for reciting 67,890 digits. A Japanese man, Akira Haraguchi, claims to have outdone Lu by memorizing 100,000 digits, though it has not been officially confirmed.
Tsai said he has memorized 125 digits. At the Pi Day event on the campus, math professor Denny Gulick has made a tradition of reciting up to 100.
For the lovers of pai, there's a related holiday known as Pi Approximation Day. Because Europeans abbreviate dates with the day preceding month, they celebrate July 22, or 22/7, a common approximate fraction used before the time of calculators. Pi day can also be celebrated on the 314th day of the year.
These "approximation" days provide a nice backup celebration for the university math club, in case March 14 falls on a weekend when students aren't around.
But to Tsai, these variations are characteristic of the entire field.
"One of the things that comes as a recurring theme in math is to approach things from different perspectives," he said.
efalaris@gmail.com
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Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Jillian
posted 3/15/08 @ 10:21 PM EST
Good article. There's actually a whole site I found devoted to Pi Day, (http://www.PiDayInternational.org) which has a "PiOMatic" in the "Pi Diner" which goes way beyond cherry pi - it actually dispenses MILLIONS of digits of pi. (Continued…)
Jebus Rulez
posted 3/17/08 @ 2:22 PM EST
I don't believe in pi.
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