10 Ways to Celebrate Pi Day 2016
People celebrate Pi Day around the
world in many different ways, including pie-eating, pie-throwing and even
pi-recitation contests, where participants recite digits of this irrational
number from memory. After last year’s ultimate Pi Day when, on 3.14.15 at
9:26:53, the date and time corresponded to the first 10 digits of the
mathematical constant pi (3.141592653), I wondered what the annual celebration
might look like this year — would it be possible to top an event that happens
only once per century? My investigation quickly revealed that the annual
celebration of Pi Day has apparently received a significant boost from last
year’s revelries and is going stronger than ever.
In case you’re not aware of the
background for this global celebration of mathematics, the mathematical
constant Pi — which is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter —
can be used to find the area or circumference of circles. PiDay.org
explains that “pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its
decimal point. As an irrational and transcendental number, it will continue
infinitely without repetition or pattern. While only a handful of digits are
needed for typical calculations, Pi’s infinite nature makes it a fun challenge
to memorize, and to computationally calculate more and more digits.”
In 2009, the United States House of
Representatives declared March 14 (3.14) to be National Pi Day. They passed
resolution HR 224 to celebrate the importance of math, science and education in
our lives, while sparking interest in learning and reminding the public of the
importance of strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education
as a vehicle to inspire ongoing innovation in the upcoming generation
Suzanne Tracy, Editor-in-Chief,
Scientific Computing and HPC Source