Nerds like us all over the world are celebrating what is known as Pi Day today. Celebrated on March 14 (or 3/14) because the date consist of the most significant digits if pi: 3.14.
Many people observe Pi Day by — you guessed it — eating pie! Some also sit down and discuss the significance of the number and most recently, people have started watching Ang Lee’s Oscar winning movie, LIFE OF PI! The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is known for mailing out its application decision letters on Pi Day and they’ve now announced that they will post these letters online on Pi Day at exactly 6.28pm.
DID YOU KNOW?
- Pi is the circumference (distance around) of a circle divided by its diameter (the distance across.)
- Pi Day is the same day as Albert Einstein’s birthday!
- Pi has been known for approximately 4,000 years and the first calculation of pi was done by Archimedes of Syracuse, one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient world.
- Pi goes on forever and no computer can know all of its digits. However, a a team of mathematicians at the University of Tokyo managed to use computers to calculate pi up to 1,241,100,000,000 decimal places!
- It wasn’t until the 1700s that the Greek letter π was used to represent pi.
- There are clubs that are dedicated solely to memorizing and reciting pi to thousands of decimal points.