So… Pie Day, or I guess it is spelled “Pi Day”, is something I never celebrated ever… until I got married. Then I learned how important and fun Pi Day could be… joking…
Why is Pi day so awesome? What is Pi? I’m going to have my Math-y Husband be a guest and tell you why!
Hello humans, my wife tells me I have to explain why Pi is awesome. One could write a book on why Pi is amazing. Oh wait, they already have (see this or this or this or this). Now technically Pi is just a letter of the Greek alphabet and can be used to represent any quantity (and sometimes is in math courses), but the number approximated as 3.14159265359*… is universally represented by this letter. Hence, when someone refers to Pi (not pie) without further clarification they are usually referring to this number. But what IS it ? Simply stated, it is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. That is boring. A much more interesting question is this: WHY do we care? Because it has been historically very difficult to calculate with accuracy. The Greeks were obsessed with trying to calculate it and the great Archimedes nearly discovered Calculus in his pursuit to calculate pi (this was nearly 2,000 years before it was finally discovered by Newton and Leibniz!!!!). Pi is also irrational (legend has it that the man who proved that irrationals existed was murdered by Pythagoras’ secretive mathematical society who were displeased with his findings… and yes, this is the same Pythagoras we read about in high school when we learn Pythagoras’ Theorem). Pi is also transcendental and is one of the first numbers proven to be so (this is also a mind blowing concept btw). It was not until Pi was proven to be transcendental in 1882 that the famous three unsolved Greek problems were finally demonstrated to be impossible… 2000 years after they were first posed! Pi also plays a role in one of the most beautiful mathematical formulas ever discovered (I understand that this is a subjective claim, but just look at it! It contains some of the most fascinating and most written about numbers [Pi, e, i, 0, and 1] all in one elegant formula!).
*= I understand that one may go about caviling and claim that there are other numbers which could be abbreviated as 3.14159265359… other than Pi and, hence, my claim that “THE number approximated as 3.14159265359… is universally represented by this letter…” is too broad of a statement. I agree that it should be reworded to eliminate this ambiguity. But this does bring up another good poi
Holy cow… this is a craft blog… not a mathlete’s personal diary! I should have warned you if I had known… just read the part about a math club murdering some other dude. I told him to write a math blog for himself… wow… sorry!
So, super cool eh? (Sarcastic… hehe) Well my husband was in the craziness of graduate school and work so he didn’t tell me for sure if he wanted to celebrate. He was so busy and so exhausted. Anyway, that night right before the amazing moment… he decided he needed to celebrate because this pie day was extra special… why? I had no clue but let me hand over my computer to Nathan again… But I will limit him to one sentence… maybe two. No run-ons. (You’re very welcome).
Ok, first of all, I barely even began to scratch the surface of why Pi is cool, but I only have one more sentence after this and – since I am not allowed any run-ons – I can only recommend you read books on it. Now, this last Pi day (March 14, 2015) was special because the date could be written as 3/14/15, which are the first numbers in the infinite sequence that is Pi, allowing one to also include the time of day to extend out further into the sequence than would normally be possible in other years.
A pie? I had no Gluten Free ready anything to make a pie and it was only 12 minutes till the “magic” moment. So we made a giant, no-bake cookie. Which was fast, easy and Gluten Free. I got the recipe from here. It was easy and tasted good. Remember to use GF oats!
Last minute gluten free pie day! Done!
Party on you Math nerds… 🙂
A presto!
Jacqueline
From Bugs to Bows 