Yes, it's Pi (π) day, and time to get your geek on!
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679…
We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming to Bring You This Special Report on International Pi Day…
March 14 (3/14) is Pi day
The idea of "Pi Day" originated with physicist Larry Shaw, who organized the first Pi Day celebration at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988. Math fans celebrate by bringing a variety of pies to work and school. Yummm!
Almost exactly twenty-one years later, on March 11, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution proclaiming March 14 to be National Pi Day.
What exactly is Pi (π)?
Pi is defined to be the ratio between the circumference C of a circle and its diameter d. Thus, π = C/d. Implicit in this definition is a fact from geometry: in the Euclidean plane, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is the same for every circle.
I found out more about Pi from the University of Bonaventure Website HERE.
Calculus has been used to prove that pi is irrational, which implies that the digits of pi go on forever without settling into a repeating pattern. Using powerful mathematics and powerful computers, pi has been computed to one hundred trillion digits. The digits of pi do not appear to have any pattern whatsoever---they seem to be random. It's remarkable that from such simplicity (π = C/d) comes such complexity (the digits of pi).
That’s a whole lotta Pi
The largest number of decimal digits of pi ever computed is one hundred trillion (100,000,000,000,000). This staggering achievement was completed on March 21, 2022 by Emma Haruka Iwao using Google Cloud. The total time of the computation was 158 days.
The digits were never printed out, but if they were, what would one hundred trillion digits look like? If every book in the Friedsam Memorial Library were replaced by a book containing only digits of pi, we would need over 200 Friedsam Libraries to hold all of the books required to contain the digits from Iwao's calculation.
How many digits of Pi do you need?
The largest number of digits of pi that you will ever need is 42, at least for computing circumferences of circles. To compute the circumference of the known universe with an error less than the diameter of a proton, you need 42 digits of pi**. It seems safe to conclude that 42 digits is sufficient accuracy in pi for any circle measurement problem you're likely to encounter. (This application of the number 42 will please fans of Douglas Adams.) Thus, in the mountains of known digits of pi, all digits beyond the 42nd have no practical value. Here are all the digits of pi you'll ever need:
3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169
** We assume that the diameter of the known universe is 93 billion light years and that the diameter of a proton is 1.6∙10-15 meters.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming….
Let’s eat pie safely out there… Mike
Circles are round. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to "round" the value of Pi to a few less digits...! "Geek On"!! 😁👍
Prior to retirement, I worked in a national laboratory. PI day celebration lunches were a lot of fun! I don’t remember being able to purchase our Pizzas for $PI as stated above by Neil but it is heartening to think the pizza places these days have caught on! My favorite part of our PI days was when proud and brilliant physics would recite PI from memory to a mind boggling number of digits. This often involved telling bad PI jokes such as:
Q: Why should you never talk to pi?
A: Because he’ll just go on forever.
Q: What did pi say to its partner?
A: Stop being so irrational.
Q: Why did pi have its driver’s license revoked?
A: Because it didn’t know when to stop.
Q: What do you get when you take the sun and divide its circumference by its diameter?
A: Pi in the sky.
Have fun on PI day!