How will you measure up on 3-14-16: National Pi Day?

Devin Barge

by Devin Barge, Reporter
March 11, 2016

National Pi Day has been celebrated since 1989. The celebration began on a large scale at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Since then it has been celebrated worldwide on March 14th (3/14). Pi is a Greek letter that is used as a symbol in math to represent a constant. This constant is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Rajveer Meena loves Pi. He holds the world record for the most digits of Pi memorized and recited. He recited 70,000 digits of Pi in 2014. Guinness Book of World Records representatives recorded this event officially at the VIT University in Vellore, India. It took 10 hours to recite.

To put things in perspective, here are some digits of Pi. 3.14159265358979323846264338327950. The constant Pi currently has a record breaking 10 trillion calculated digits. In theory, Pi continues on forever, so 10 trillion is a relatively small number.

Math teachers, Mrs. Jennifer Purgason and Mrs. Barbara Creighton tied for the most digits of Pi memorized, which was 5 digits, 3.14592.

“My favorite number is Pi because it is mathematically cool,” said Creighton who teaches Pre-Calculus with Trigonometry

Both Creighton and Mrs. Jennifer Weiss used to celebrate National Pi Day with the same activity in school. Their students would bring and eat pies in class to celebrate.

Purgason doesn’t celebrate National Pi Day usually at home or with her students. She does, however, owns some math apparel.

“My favorite number is 17 because that was my soccer number when I played in high school,” said Ms. Purgason, calculus teacher.

“My favorite number is 13 because it was my lucky number growing up. Also it was my jersey number,” said Weiss, Algebra II teacher.

“My favorite number is 11. I don’t really have a story as to why it is, but in my life 11 just pops up usually in some form,” said Mrs. Allison Partner, who teaches Probability and Statistics.

Fun facts about Pi:

  • World renown mathematician, Albert Einstein was born on Pi day, March 14th in 1879.
  • Sheldon Cooper from the TV show, The Big Bang Theory, recited 1000 digits of Pi when he was in kindergarten (In real life–not just on television!)
  • It would take a person approximately 316,887 years to recite the 10 trillion digits of Pi without stopping,at a rate of one digit per second.
  • In 1949, it took ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) 70 hours to calculate 2,037 decimal places of pi
  • MIT emails acceptance letters on Pi Day at 1:59 pm. The MIT cheer is, “Cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159.”

Pi-themed activities:

  • Bake and eat a pie
  • Pie eating contest
  • Walk/run 3.14 miles
  • Watch the movie, Life of Pi
  • Read the Joy of Pi
  • Pi reciting competitions
  • Throw a pie at someone

Math Teacher Favorite Pi Recipes