Thank God it's Pi Day!

Geek out!  This morning, three of Google's 10 most searched terms had to do with Pi Day. (Today!)  "Pi Day" is, as of this writing, the fourth most-searched term on the web, whereas "pie day" has enjoyed a nice juicy spike and is at No. 7  (unfortunately, these searchers are sadly off the mark--National Pie Day was almost two months ago).  "Pi song" is humming at No. 9.  I heartily recommend you listen to the whole thing here, it's incredibly catchy.  And for good measure, "what is the circumference of a circle" is hanging out at 14.

Why is today Pi Day?  Check out a brief history of the day at our Homeroom blog. The short answer is that today's date is 3/14 and pi begins with 3.14.  I've got to say that it's hilarious that only the first three digits of this famously long number determine the celebration date.  If we really wanted to make Pi Day special, we would retroactively celebrate its anniversary on 3/14/1592.  And if we really, really really wanted to nail Pi Day down, it would've been on 3/14/1592 at 6:53:58:97:93:23 a.m.

But who's counting.

Search "Pi Day" and you get, of course, the Wikipedia entry--which argues that instead of celebrating it in 1592, you could just celebrate Pi Day today--3/14, at 1:59:26 p.m. -- so here in L.A. we've still got a couple hours.  But what oh what to do to get ready?  Check out the suggestions for how to celebrate Pi day here.  One of them is to just express every number you use all day in terms of Pi:  My, how young you look, ma'am--mind if I ask your age?   Of course not young man, I'm 15π years old!

If you're desirous of a pi-centric getaway, the Daily Deal figured out where the coordinate (Pi, Pi) is on the map of earth.

And on and on and on ... there are as many ways to distract yourself with Pi Day as there are digits in the number.  If you find anything extra fun, let us know....

Comments

[L.Wilson]

Hello 'Scout'...

I am quite upset about what you did to Free Speech on the Forum regarding the sick marine and that poor animal.
People are angry...what do you expect?
They have a right to vent their anger at this despicable, sadistic murder of a helpless animal.
I, for one, would like to see the prosecution of this individual and the dishonorable discharge from the Marines.
Each time I run across this story, it makes me a little angrier and I want to see something done about this.
That young man needs to be taught a lesson that he will not forget and others need to see that lesson played out.
Maybe it will be a deterrent from further episodes of cruelty such as this.
I am sickened by this behavior by a member of the U.S. Military.
And for you, Sir, to block further comments on this story, shows that you have a problem with 'controlling others.'
Whose side are you on, anyways???
Please do address my email...that I would like very much,
Thankyou,
Mrs. L. Wilson,
Vancouver, Canada.

[fezco]

Happy Pi Day to all. Indeed we distributed about a dozen pies across three different offices today to celebrate Pi appreciation day. About 80% of our workforce are engineers and math geeks, so Pi day is bigger than St. Patrick's day.

Don't be irrational!

[Winfield J. Abbe]

If you wrap a string around the circumference of a circle, as for example a can in the kitchen pantry, and measure the length laid out straight on the table, then measure the diameter of the same circle or can in the same units, and divide the circumference by the diameter, the result is pi=3.14159... This result is the same dimensionless number for every circle. It is not a repeating decimal and therefore cannot be represented as the ratio of two integers; it is called irrational.
This beautiful and magical number comes up in virtually every branch of mathematics and physics. Some people don't like the fact that it is not exactly 3.0. In fact an ignorant legislator of a state (I believe it was Indiana) once proposed a law to make it exactly 3.0. Fortunately ignorant legislators are not able to make laws changing or altering the laws of physics and mathematics. If they could, our buildings would all be falling down, cars would be crashing and the space shuttle would not fly.
Everybody should celebrate pi day everyday instead of meaningless and often corrupt sports entertainment. In fact, why not have a Pi section in every newspaper like we must read all that fixed sports business garbage every day and listen to it again on the so-called "news".
This magical number pi has contributed more to our civilization than any number of corrupt sports activities.
Thank you Los Angeles Times for devoting this tiny amount of space to this giganticly important number and concept.

Winfield J. Abbe
A.B., Physics, UC Berkeley, 1961
Ph.D., Physics, UC Riverside, 1966
Athens, Georgia