pi squared = 9.8696
As the daughter of a mathematician, Pi Day is a big deal in our family. Especially to my dad whose two favorite things are math and pie, cherry pie that is!
In 2009 Congress designated March 14th (3.14), as National Pi Day. Pi (Π), the greek letter, equals approximately 3.14159 and stands for the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It is an irrational number which I always found to be humorous. (A lot of numbers are irrational when it comes to math and me!) A rational number is any number that can be expressed as a fraction. All fractions have decimals that will terminate or if the decimal does not terminate, it will repeat. An irrational number is one that is not rational. It cannot be written as a fraction or a decimal because the decimal will never end and it won’t repeat as a set pattern.
Pi’s decimal has been calculated in the trillions! See 100,000 digits of pi here: www.geom.uiuc.edu/~huberty/math5337/groupe/digits.html There are many irrational numbers. Pi is the most famous and can be found in many forays throughout math and science.
Today, in schools all across the country, students are trying to see how far they can get by memorizing pi to the furthest decimal place. How far can you go? 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971……
For some other ideas on how you can celebrate pi day, visit www.piday.org and don’t forget to eat some pie. My favorite is my mom’s apple pie. Let the calculating and eating begin!
Special thanks to Professor Jack Crowell for checking my facts.
Celebrate the day! Let Scarlett Dalila show you the way.
scarlettdalila 