Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th (3-14) around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. Most textbooks however only use 3.14 or 22/7 to calculate the circumference and area of a circle.
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. Akira Haraguchi, a Japanese mentalist, has recited the most digits of pi from memory. It took him 16 hours to recite 100,000 decimal places from memory.
AE/MS celebrated Pi Day on March 14. There was a competition school-wide to see who could memorize the most digits of pi, and everyone who memorized digits did a great job! We had 71 kindergarten through eighth grade students who wanted to take a shot at reciting pi digits. The reciting ranged from 3 digits up to 101 digits of pi.
During the week, students and staff members each decorated a paper plate with one digit of pi. Students brought their plates to the gym for a school-wide assembly. Seventy-one students were recognized for their efforts, and then it was time for the big Pi Challenge. Our goal was to make a spiral starting in the center of the gym with Ernie the Eagle and spiraling out in the order of the pi digits.
We had well over 250 people participating. This process took about 30 minutes to complete. I am very proud of everyone who made this day a huge success! Everyone received a pi pencil and a “Whoopie Pi”!
Interesting Facts About Pi
Pi is the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet, just as P is the 16th of our alphabet.
Pi is an irrational number, which means that is cannot be represented exactly by a fraction. This was first proved in the 18th century.
The mathematical use of the Greek letter pi was popularized by William Jones in 1706.
It was chosen for being the first letter of the Greek word for “perimeter.”
Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day: March 14, 1879.
Pi is the most recognized mathematical constant in the world. Scholars often consider pi the most important and intriguing number in all of mathematics.
In the Star Trek episode “Wolf in the Fold,” Spock foils the evil computer by commanding it to “compute to the last digit the value of pi.”
Egyptologists and followers of mysticism have been fascinated for centuries by the fact that the Great Pyramid at Giza seems to approximate pi. The vertical height of the pyramid has the same relationship to the perimeter of its base as the radius of a circle has to its circumference.
If you were to print 1 billion decimal places of pi in ordinary font, it would stretch from New York City to Kansas.
3.14 backwards looks like PIE.
“I prefer pi” is a palindrome — it reads the same backwards as forwards.
The first million decimal places of pi consist of 99,959 zeros, 99,758 ones, 100,026 twos, 100,229 threes, 100,230 fours, 100,359 fives, 99,548 sixes, 99,800 sevens, 99,985 eights, and 100,106 nines.
There are no occurrences of the sequence 123456 in the first million digits of pi – but of the eight 12345s that do occur, three are followed by another 5. The sequence 012345 occurs twice and, in both cases, it is followed by another 5.
The first six digits of pi (314159) appear in order at least six times among the first 10 million decimal places of pi.
At position 763 there are six nines in a row, which is known as the Feynman Point.
The fraction 22/7 is a well-used approximation for pi.