This Monday is Pi Day! You know, Pi? The most famous number in math! The irrational – and some would say transcendental – number that is generated by comparing the circumference of a circle to its diameter? Just measure the distance around any circle and then measure the distance straight across it, going through the centre point. Divide the first number by the second number and you’ll get Pi. All circles, no matter how big or how small, will generate the same value of Pi, commonly estimated at 3.14. The number is actually infinite and some real wonky people will memorize the value of Pi up to 100 or more digits. Supercomputers are tested to see how fast they are by calculating the value of Pi up to a million digits, or even a trillion!
Pi Day is celebrated around the world on March 14 (get it? 3.14, fourteenth day of the third month). Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent it with accuracy, since you can’t write the number itself, only an estimate. But why does Pi fascinate us so? It’s the simplest possible ratio of the simplest possible shape, and yet this relationship creates a number so chaotic and complex that its random nature seems to hold the mysteries of the universe, somehow. People have represented Pi’s digits artistically, musically, and have found odd associations of Pi with such things as the patterns generated by dropping hundreds of needles on the floor. It’s pretty weird, but yet cool.
Who first discovered Pi? No one knows, but it does seem that it’s been around since at least 1900 BC because we have a Babylonian tablet of that age that shows calculations for a circle and show a value of 3.125 for Pi.
The Rhind Papyrus (ca.1650 BC) gives us insight into the mathematics of ancient Egypt. The Egyptians calculated the area of a circle by a formula that gave the approximate value of 3.1605 for Pi. There is evidence that they used Pi to design and build the Pyramids.
Archimedes (287–212 BC) did some really beautiful calculations to get a very close estimate of Pi. He understood that he had not found the value of Pi but only an approximation stating that the value is between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71.
The British man Daniel Tammet even recited Pi to 22,500 digits on live TV in March of 2004. It took five hours and nine minutes and he had no errors! He describes it not so much as memorization, but of seeing the numbers as brilliant colours and landscapes that he is traveling through. No wonder people find Pi to be transcendental!
