Pi for everyone!

by mdr on Mar. 14th, 2007

Pi r squared; cake are round: Photo courtesy LeJyBy at Flickr Creative Commons
Pi r squared; cake are round: Photo courtesy LeJyBy at Flickr Creative Commons
Today, March 14, is pi day. No, not the edible kind but rather the irrational number 3.14.... etc., etc. which goes on ad infinitum (or ad nauseum if you have too much of it) and has been used for thousands of years to calculate the area of a circle.

Because today's date is written as 3/14 math maniacs around the world are honoring pi on this day. They've been doing so since the 1980's. Coincidently, it's also Albert Einstein 's 128th birthday.

Wikipedia has a nifty graphic that illustrates how pi is determined . Bryan did a previous post a while back that has some more information, including a site that calculates pi to 100,000 decimals! But if you want smaller slice of pi, go here.

And if you're not full after that, here's some more places online to find info:

Math Forum with Dr. Math
Pi Day
Teach pi

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