Yay! It's that time of year -- it's Pi Day. Come celebrate with a piece of pie from the Village Inn. You can order dinner beforehand or skip right to dessert. Of course, you can still join us without purchasing either.
Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (3/14) since 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant digits of π. In 2009, the United States House of Representatives supported the designation of Pi Day.
A free slice of pie to the cacher who can recite the most digits of pi. Hopefully, Rajveer Meena of Vellore, India, won't be joining us as he recited pi to 70,000 decimal places on March 21, 2015.
Number enthusiasts have memorized many digits of pi. Many people use memory aids, such as mnemonic techniques known as piphilology, to help them remember. Often, they use poems written in Pilish (in which the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit of pi), such as this excerpt: How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. This creative approach would give us 3.14159265358979. At the end of the day though, that would be one very detailed story to memorize!
The concept of pi has been around for thousands of years. The ancient Babylonians knew of pi's existence nearly 4,000 years ago. A Babylonian tablet from between 1900 B.C. and 1680 B.C. calculates pi as 3.125, and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus of 1650 B.C., a famous Egyptian mathematical document, lists a value of 3.1605. The King James Bible (I Kings 7:23) gives an approximation of pi in cubits, an archaic unit of length corresponding to the length of the forearm from the elbow to the middle finger tip (estimated at about 18 inches, or 46 centimeters). The Greek mathematician Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) approximated pi using the Pythagorean theorem, a geometric relationship between the length of a triangle's sides and the area of the polygons inside and outside of circles.
While many mathletes are enamored with pi, there is a resistance movement growing. Some argue that pi is a derived quantity, and that the value tau (equal to twice pi) is a more intuitive irrational number. But I am NOT changing my caching name to peace love tau!