Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Happy Pi Day

March 14th is celebrated by the math nerds the world over as Pi Day. See, the date is 3/14, which is the two-decimal representation of the transcendental number pi.

Pi is the ratio a circle's circumference to its diameter. It's one of those magical things that exists in the world, and yet can only be represented using Arabic numerals with only so much accuracy. 3.14159 is the common five-decimal representation you'll get from math heads.

The Egyptians recognized the importance of the number, and tended to approximate it as the square-root of 10. That's about 3.16.

The Greeks used to use a handy fraction to approximate pi: 22/7, and this is more accurate that sq-root(10).

Go forth and enjoy the math nerd day!

Happy Pi Day!

1 comment:

  1. I hope you had a great Pi Day..... sorry I missed it...

    ReplyDelete