14 March – Happy Pi Day
The beautiful constant pi (π) is celebrated by mathematicians around the world on National Pi Day on March 14.
14 March – Happy Pi Day!
Today i.e March 14, every year this day, a number of enthusiasts celebrate Pi Day (which also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday). Pi is “the name of a symbol (π) beautiful in its simplicity, pi (pi = periphery) is the relationship between the perimeter of a circle (the circumference) and the distance across that circle (the diameter) or 3.1415927 first used by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1748. For any circle, the principle is without exception universal — meaning it’s always the same whether it be applied to bake a pie, a dinner plate, a merry-go-round, or a bicycle wheel.
Pi has been calculated to over 50 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.
For decades the ancient Greeks struggled with rational numbers (that could be written as a simple fraction) to arrive at the concept of π or pi. It was only much later discovered that π or pi is an irrational number. Not crazy, mind you, but it does go on for infinity and can’t be corralled into a corner.
3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128 4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196 4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 2712019091 4564856692 3460348610 4543266482 1339360726 0249141273 7245870066 0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436 7892590360 0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094 3305727036 5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548 0744623799 6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912 9833673362 4406566430 8602139494 6395224737 1907021798 6094370277 0539217176 2931767523 8467481846 7669405132 0005681271 4526356082 7785771342 7577896091 7363717872 1468440901 2249534301 4654958537 1050792279 6892589235 4201995611 2129021960 8640344181 5981362977 4771309960 5187072113 4999999837 2978049951 0597317328 1609631859 5024459455 3469083026 4252230825 3344685035 2619311881 7101000313 7838752886 5875332083 8142061717 7669147303 5982534904 2875546873 1159562863 8823537875 9375195778 1857780532 1712268066 1300192787 6611195909 2164201989 ∞
The word comes from the Greek letter pi (which comes from the Hebrew word for “little mouth”), as an abbreviation of the Greek periphereia, meaning “periphery,” referring to the periphery or diameter of a circle.
What is Piphilology (Pi + Philology)
Piphilology “comprises the creation and use of mnemonic techniques to remember a span of digits of the mathematical constant π.” The word is a blend of pi and philology, “the study of language,” which comes from the Greek philologos, “fond of learning or of words.” A mnemonic (from the Greek mnemonikos, “of or pertaining to memory”) is “a device, such as a formula or rhyme, used as an aid in remembering.”
Piem (Pi + Poem)
A piem is such a device for memorizing the digits of pi (if you’re so inclined). A portmanteau of pi and poem, piems “represent π in a way such that the length of each word (in letters) represents a digit.”
Another type of mnemonic is a visual mnemonic, which works “by associating an image with characters or objects whose name sounds like the item that has to be memorized.” A simple visual mnemonic for identifying one’s drinking glass and bread plate while dining in a formal setting with others is to form a lower case B with one’s left hand and a lower case D with one’s right. One’s drinking glass, represented by D, is on the right, while one’s bread plate, represented by B, is on the left.
Today, no one exactly knows who came up with the recipe for pi, but the symbol for pi was first used in 1706 by William Jones, and later made popular by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737.
Happy Pi Day!
