The 14th of March is a special day for mathematicians. It is known as Pi-Day because the Americans write the date as 3.14. This is the value of pi (π) rounded to two decimal places. At Peter Moyes Anglican Community School, we celebrate this day every year. For Pi-Day 2019, students were invited to research an interesting and unique fact regarding π and present this to the Mathematics department staff. If we judged that the fact was indeed interesting and unique, then the student was rewarded with a pie.
Over 100 pies were given to middle and senior school students this year and the Mathematics Department was impressed with the range of interesting facts presented. Well done to all our aspiring mathematicians as well as those who were simply hungry! Well done too to Preston Jones as the champion of Pi-day for knowing that tau (τ) is a constant that is equal to 2 π. He did win two pies for this fact!!
Here are some of the facts presented:
- It would take you 133 years to recite all the known digits of π.
- Albert Einstein was born on Pi-Day
- The Babylonians knew about 𝑝i 4000 years ago
- The ancient Egyptians estimated pi to be 3.1605
- Before the symbol of π was used, pi was referred to as ”the quantity by which the diameter is multiplied that yields the circumference”
- If you mirror 3.14 it reads the word PIE.
- Computers can calculate pi to 22 trillion digits, but NASA only uses 15 digits and this gives their space trajectory a margin of error less that a hydrogen atom.
- There are 99 178 one’s in the first million digits of pi.
- The world record for the most number of digits recited is 67 890
- Pi radians is equal to 180º.
- log_e〖((-1)/i〗)= π