Today is Pi Day--as in pi, the Greek symbol used in math, not the pie you eat!
Why?
Because the date is 3/14 and the approximate value of pi is 3.14!
It wasn't until I started teaching and one of my students told me about it that I began to celebrate pi day. I've even read about one teacher celebrating with her class specifically at 1:59pm (because pi to 5 digits is 3.14159)! In fact, in doing some research for this blog post, I found a site that does a Pi Drop at 1:59pm on 3/14. To see the replay of last year's Pi drop click here. You can watch this year's live drop on the site at 1:59pm today!
Pi is a number that many mathematicians and even many of my students find intriguing. As a result of questions from students, I did some research to discover that the "World Record" for digits of pi calculated is over 1 trillion digits.
You can learn all sorts of fun facts about pi at the Joy of Pi website (which is based on the book of the same name). I got the pirelated cartoon created by John Grimes below there as well.
I hope you have a wonderful Pi Day!
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