March 14

It comes every year on this day.  March 14.  It’s better known as Pi Day.

I can remember first learning about Pi.  3.14 or 22/7 was good enough to solve the problems presented in class.  And, beyond that, why would you want to learn more?

Then, I had a real mathematics geek who got us more excited and encouraged us to learn more about Pi and to memorize more than just two digits of decimal places.  So, I went as far as 3.1415926.

The game changed with the calculator and this magic button.

And, of course, your favourite programming language has a value of pi built into it.  Have you ever wondered to how many digits of accuracy?

The worlds best URL is located at “http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com/”

The website is called Pi to 1,000,000 places.  Visiting and actually finding the million digits are two different things but hey…

Or, cheat and visit this site.

And get a poster here.

Or, write your own program.

I’ve been keeping track of interesting things about Pi for a long time.  The current collection is here.  I supposed collecting links for this is irrational but it keeps me occupied and I enjoy solving the challenges and read that there are so many mathematicians fascinated by documenting their experiences.

It’s a shame that Pi Day appears during the March Break.  But, you could always celebrate when the students come back or, get ahead of the game, like Alice Aspinall did.