Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to get your nerd on. Know what today is? It’s Pi Day. What’s that you say? Why, it’s March 14th. You know, 3/14.
3.14159265358979323846264…
That’s right, it’s that Pi. We’ve learned it in school. We all know it’s a crazy number. But really, what is it?
“Pi is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of any circle. Circumference is Pi times the diameter,” says Teaching Associate Professor in the Mathematics department of Marquette University, Dr. Carl Mueller.
He says it’s a number that’s always been around, “Oh, it goes way back. Way, way, way back. Greek mathematics, I think, might have been when it started. And it’s actually a fairly straightforward fact that the circumference and the diameter of a circle always have the same ratio. And it was across cultures and not necessarily where one person discovered it and shared it with somebody else. It was something that was there to be discovered and understood.”
But what do we need it for?
Mueller explains, “Pi is used for a lot of mathematical formulas. Even things that don’t seem to include circles. There are probability questions that use pi. It is important for things like if you want to get a spacecraft to Mars, you’re going to need to know pi so that you can aim it correctly. But the number of digits that you need is surprisingly small. Computers use 15 decimal places after the three. But it’s more than enough to get you to Mars and land exactly where you want to land. If you use just those 16 digits, counting the 3, and you calculate the circumference of the Earth at the equator, because you’ve rounded off a little bit, you’ll be off by about the width of a molecule.”
Now, Pi is what’s known as an irrational number, a number that can’t be written as a simple fraction. And in its decimal form, it doesn’t end. Ever. It has an infinite number of digits after the decimal point. Those digits also don’t repeat, each digit is different one to the next.
There are people who dedicate themselves to memorizing pi, like Dr. Carl, but he’s got way more than needed.
“About 130 now, I think. It might be 140. The first hundred are burned in my brain. I learned those the summer between seventh and eighth grade, and they are just burned into my brain the way the alphabets burned into your brain,” says Mueller
And as of 2023, mathematicians and computer scientists have been able to calculate it out to over 100 trillion digits. We’ll never really need all those, but it’s a thing. It’s even in the Guinness Book of World Records.
A fun way to remember the first few digits is to remember, “May I have a large container of coffee.” Count the number of letters in each word and hey-presto, you’ve got the first 8 digits of Pi.
And how does a self-respecting mathematician celebrate this most auspicious day? Mueller says, “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of celebrating other than probably eating something. I mean, we’re going to do some pies. I mean, that has become a thing now, the eating of pies on Pi Day. I mean, any excuse to talk about Pi, any excuse to eat pies. I mean, it all kind of ties together.”
Ah, yes, the other kind of pie.
Well, Mr. Dye, owner and baker at Mr. Dye’s Pies right here in the Third Street Market Hall says this is a big day.
“We’ve been blessed to have a lot of Pie Days during the year. This is the biggest one. There’s two national Pie Days, and this one is the biggest one. So, we definitely see an uptick in orders and interest and the phone ringing, and we do expect a lot of traffic, explains Dye.
We know what Pi is, but what is PIE with an E?
Well, according to Mr. Dye, a pie has to have some crust, “It doesn’t necessarily have to be round, but you got to get some crust going. There’s some pies that would have a crust on top and on the bottom. We also started doing a ground beef pasty. So with the ground beef onions was more savory, and that’s definitely a pie as well.
So it doesn’t need to be sweet. Interesting.
So armed with all this information, head out and get some pie and see how far YOU can memorize Pi.
Happy Pi Day, everybody.
There are plenty of places you can go to celebrate your own Pi(e) Day.
Check these celebrations out:
Lakefront Brewery: Pie and Beer Pairing
National Bakery and Deli has a wide selection of Pies
Mr. Dye’s Pies in the 3rd St. Market Hall always has a tasty selection
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