Pi Day!!

I would be remiss indeed if I ignored this important holiday. :D To those who may be unaware, today is March 14^th, commonly known as Pi day. Not the kind you eat, although I encourage that as well! Pi, or pi stands for a mathematical unit used in calculating area, or circumference to a circle. The equations are as follows: A=pi*r^2 and C=pi*d. Pi is most often simply shortened to 3.14, hence March 14^th. The full number of pi is an endless string of decimal points, going on forever with not recognizable pattern. There are even contests held for who can memorize the most digits of pi. Here are the first dozen or so: 3.141592653589793… and so on and so forth. Many people like to use the time, date, year, etc to use as many digits of pi as possible. For example, March 14, at 1:59pm could be written as: 3.14 1:59:26, or the month, day, and time. Last year we all got pretty excited because we could use the year as well: 3.14.15. But perhaps the most excited we ever got was way back in the year of 1592, 100 years after Columbus. For in that year, we could use the whole year instead of just the last 2 digits: 3.14 1592! Add in the time and… 3.14 1592, 6:53:58, or month.day year, hours.minutes,seconds!!

Conversely, if we go with the ISO 8601 standard format (http://xkcd.com/1179/ ) of time and date (YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS-s) we run into a month issue:

3141-59-26 (I’m pretty sure there aren’t 59 months in a year…but who knows? If the moon crashes into the Earth by then we may need to adjust the Gregorian Calendar a wee bit).

Pi has been around since the biblical days although just the number 3 was used. Since then, the Chinese had a go at refining it, and found 7 decimal places of pi. Thereafter, pi was used in many cultures who created approximations such as 22/7, 25/8, 16/9 squared, and 339/108. It wasn’t until Archimedes took a look at it in 250 BC however, that it became closer to what we know today. Archimedes used a series of refined polygons to “trap pi” in finer and finer polygons to discover it’s value. Archimedes proved that pi rested in-between the following fractions: 223/71 and 22/7, or 3.1408 and 3.1429. Over time mathematicians improved on this until they were able to reach over 70 digits of pi! This was by hand by the way, not with computers. Today of course, we can calculate pi to as many digits as we need! I believe there is a computer out there somewhere that is still calculating the next digits of pi. Our current record by the way, is 10 trillion digits of pie, more than we’ll ever need, but possibly less than the national debt will be in a few years depending on the coming election!

Personally, I’m torn. I love Pi, but then I love Pie. Especially pumpkin pie. Oh! And Apple pie. And chocolate cream pie. And… *wanders off in search of pie*

Anywho, happy pi day everyone!

woof