Happy Pi Day everyone – a day where nerds, mathematicians and geeks alike celebrate the beautifully irrational number of pi, while the rest of us use it as an excuse to enjoy a slice of the edible kind.
Pi is, in fact, the ratio of a circle’s circumference compared to its diameter, meaning the distance around the outside of a circle is approximately 3.14 times its width.
In the Greek alphabet, pi is the 16th letter. In the English alphabet, p is also the 16th letter which some believe proves pi is the same in every language.
Pi has a very substantial fan base and some even believe it may hold the answers to the universe. Further confirmed to some by the fact Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day, 1879.
Pi Day 2018 is now also associated with another one of our greatest scientists.
This year, Stephen Hawking passed away on March 14, 2018, in Cambridge, U.K.
Related: Tributes from around the world pour in for Stephen Hawking
This year’s Pi Day is also the 30th anniversary of Larry Shaw founding Pi Day in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium museum.
To celebrate, Google shared a video with a tasty, circular doodle, as well as an excellent apple pie recipe, for all to enjoy.
For 4,000 years now humans have tried to “solve” pi, an activity some scholars say we are programmed to do. It is said humans need to find patterns in everything to find meaning in our work.
Sci-fi writers often bring pi into their work as well; in fact during the Star Trek episode “Wolf in the Fold,” Spock foils the evil computer by commanding it to “compute to last digit the value of pi.”
Pi has been calculated to more than a trillion digits beyond its decimal point. Digits that woul, if spoken aloud, take hundreds of years to recite without stopping, taking bathroom breaks or eating.
“As an irrational and transcendental number, it will continue infinitely without repetition or pattern,” writes the http://www.piday.org/ website.
Also…3.14 mirrored or backwards spells PIE, mind blown!
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