Happy Pi Day
Happy Pi Day
The 14th March is Pi Day (3.14 Gettit?)
Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter and is commonly used to 2 decimal places as 3.14. It amazed the ancient Greeks and others that every single circle should obey this relationship. It was also unsettling in that it couldn’t be represented as a fraction of two whole numbers.
It crops up in so many places in mathematics. Perhaps we have forgotten to be amazed.
Pi is an “irrational number” and the decimal places go on forever without repetition. Some people memorise hundreds of thousands of places of Pi (I know not why, because for most calculations 2 decimal place is enough)
PI Day celebrations started in the US as you might guess as 14th March is 3/14 there while it is 14/3 here however it is a lot of fun and there are a lot of ideas at http://www.piday.org/
Maths Week Ireland 2013 will take place from October 12 – 20th 2013