Happy Most Special Pi Day of the Century! Have Some Geeky Art

Ohai, it’s Pi Day! This is the delicious day where we can all have a slice of pie and say it’s for the math. Yum! This is the most special Pi Day of the 21st century, because it is 3/14/15, and so perhaps we should celebrate with an extra slice of pie since we’ve got the first 5 digits of Pi right there in the date. And, of course, is should be a la mode.

This year, in addition to pie, let’s celebrate with some wonderful geeky art, shall we?

Image shows a silvery sculpture of Pi on the Harbor Steps, with fruit trees blooming in the background.
The fantastic Pi sculpture on the Harbor Steps in Seattle. Alas, twas only a temporary one, so it’s gone now. Sigh. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Do you know the history of Pi? It’s quite long – we’ve known about it for four thousand years. Why, that’s just two thousand years after the creation of the world according to some young earth creationists! Of course, their holy book got pi’s value badly wrong (scroll down to The Bible Implies that Pi is Three. Deal With It”)*. So keep that in mind.

Image shows a mosiac of white tiles in a circle, with the Pi symbol picked out in dark gray tiles.
A lovely Pi mosaic at the Technical University of Berlin. Image courtesy Holger Motzkau via Wikimedia Commons.

Lots of civilizations calculated pi’s value, including the Babylonians (3.125 calculated ca. 1900-1680 BC) and the Egyptians (3.1605 calculated ca. 1650 BC). The Greeks and the Chinese got in on the act with interesting alternative methods of calculating pi.

Moar history! An Indian mathematician managed to calculate pi to the 11th decimal place in the 15th century. Pretty awesomesauce, considering nobody had calculators!

The pi symbol came into use in the 18th century: we all know it’s Greek, but did you know it was chosen because it’s the first letter of perímetros, meaning “perimeter.” See?

Image shows the Greek word "perímetros" in Greek letters.
How pretty is that?

With computers, we’ve managed to calculate the value of pi to 10 trillion digits. That, my friends, is a feat.

So have some pi for the road:

Image shows a road in a forest. There's a white stone with a black Pi symbol painted on it beside the road.
Look! It’s a “Pi Milestone on Milestone Road, Nantucket, Massachusetts.” Image courtesy John Phelan via Wikimedia Commons.

And have a great Pi Day!

*Google search results for the post itself say the page might be hacked, but the page I’ve linked is coming up as safe, and you can read the full post there. Ain’t nuthin’ like watching Jason Rosenhouse take on a creationist!

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Happy Most Special Pi Day of the Century! Have Some Geeky Art
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11 thoughts on “Happy Most Special Pi Day of the Century! Have Some Geeky Art

  1. 1

    And if you make sure to be sitting at your computer when local time is 9:26:53, you will demonstrate a level of geekdom not normally achieved by mere mortals.

    Happy Pi Day!

  2. 3

    This is the most special Pi Day of the 21st century, because it is 3/14/15

    BZZZZ! Wrong. Thank you for playing.

    π to four significant figures is 3.1416 because to five significant figures it’s 3.14159. So next year, 3/14/16, will be even more most special.

    Damn, you’d think a geologist would have had a better understanding of basic mathematics.

  3. 4

    But Al, she did not say that it was Pi rounded to five significant figures. She said

    we’ve got the first 5 digits of Pi right there in the date

    Just a slight difference.

  4. 5

    Note that this only works in America and – according to Professor Wiki – Belize, the only nations on earth to use mm/dd/yy for the date. The heavily majority of the world uses dd/mm/yy instead, which makes more sense. American (almost) exceptionalism strikes again!

  5. rq
    7

    Haha, hasn’t Dana shown her previous prowess in the maths with wonky unit conversions? I’m inclined to forgive, esp. since the ‘5’ in the 3.1415 is necessary to make the timestamp line up properly. :P
    Also, y’all should stop writing the date backwards.
    (But if you did, there would be no pi day, since there is no 31st of April.)

  6. 8

    Thinking ‘Pi’ there are a number of stars starting with that Greek (Bayer) letter (symbolised with the Pi symbol on star charts) in their names too such as the S-type red giant with a sun-like companion star Pi-1 Gruis :

    http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/pigru.html

    Plus orange supergiant Pi Puppis with its own little star cluster which actually looks quite striking in a dark sky making a diamond out of the back leg and tail of Canis Major :

    http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/pipup.html

    In addition to Pi Mensae :

    http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/pimen.html

    which is a sun-like yellow dwarf star (but much younger than our daytime star) that has a planetary or brown dwarf companion and is located relatively nearby at “just” 59 ly away.

  7. 9

    ^ (Continued) There’s also Pi Scorpii making a notable contribution to the shape of that constellation along with many other Pi stars as well.

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