Why Math geeks are so excited about March 14, 2015, at 9:26:53
BY Rebecca Jacobson March 13, 2015 at 5:26 PM EDT
It’s a most auspicious holiday for math lovers. Saturday, March 14, 2015 is Pi Day, a celebration of the irrational number that describes the ratio of a circle’s diameter to its circumference. Pi is approximately 3.141592653, but it continues at random to infinity. No matter how many numbers after the decimal place you use, the only way to get it exactly is to use the symbol pi.
Pi Day is a holiday for math (and pie) enthusiasts to celebrate their love of numbers. And this year marks a once-in-a-century occurrence. At 9:26:53 a.m. the date and time will read 3.14.15 9:26:53. That’s 10 digits of pi.
It’s odd for something out of math to become so popular, David Blatner, author of “The Joy of Pi” told the NewsHour in 2013. But there’s something special about pi that people connect with, he said.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/happy-pi-day-how-are-you-celeb
Why Pi Matters
By Steven Strogatz
Every March 14th, mathematicians like me are prodded out of our burrows like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day, blinking and bewildered by all the fuss. Yes, it’s Pi Day again. And not just any Pi Day. They’re calling this the Pi Day of the century: 3.14.15. Pi to five digits. A once-in-a-lifetime thing.
I’m dreading it. No hope of solving any equations that day, what with the pie-eating contests, the bickering over the merits of pi versus tau (pi times two), and the throwdowns over who can recite more digits of pi. Just stay off the streets at 9:26:53, when the time will approximate pi to ten places: 3.141592653.
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/pi-day-why-pi-matters
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