Starship Asterisk*

Mathematics enthusiasts will this weekend be celebrating Pi day, which falls on 14 March in honour of the famous ratio's first few digits, 3.14. You probably know that pi is the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, but here are some less familiar facts about the mathematical constant. We did consider giving you 3.14 facts but alas we had five…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Thomas_Malory wrote:
<<Sir Thomas Malory (died 3/14/1471) was the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur.
Malory's surname comes from the Old French adjective maleüré meaning ill-omened or unfortunate.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake wrote:
<<Finnegans Wake, a work of comic fiction by Irish author James Joyce, is one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language.

At the close of her monologue, ALP - as the [Irish] river Liffey - disappears at dawn into the ocean.

The book's last words [on the 16th line of the 314th sheet of paper] are a fragment,
but they can be turned into a complete sentence by attaching them to the words that start the book:

314:16: "A way a lone a last a loved a long the..."
1:1: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.">>

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18649-pi-day-five-tasty-facts-about-the-famous-ratio.html wrote:
<<Pi controls the path of winding rivers from the Amazon to the Thames. A river's meandering is described by its sinuosity – the length along its winding path divided by the distance from source to ocean as the crow flies. It turns out the average river has a sinuosity of about 3.14.>>

JoAnne Hewett wrote:
Today is the much celebrated pi-day . Ok, perhaps it’s not that big a holiday – I don’t think Hallmark is selling any pi-day cards yet – but anyone who uses google today knows that something mathematical and geeky is being honored. I promise not to go into diatribes about calculations of the first few million digits of pi, or how many digits one needs to keep in order to calculate the radius of the universe to atomic accuracy. Instead, I merely want to relay a simple short story a colleague of mine recounted to me years ago.

Several years ago, before pi-day was famous, a student called the phone number associated with the digits in pi that appear after the decimal point, i.e., 1-415-926-5358. Apparently this is rather common now, and in fact, appears to be promoted as a mnemonic for the first 10 decimal places for those folks we need to have those numbers handy at all times. But this story happened in earlier times, back before the Bay Area split into several area codes. And, as the clever reader has already guessed, that student reached the SLAC main gate. How cool to phone pi and reach the main gate of a major national scientific research laboratory!

Alas, time and phone numbers march on, and nowadays phoning pi yields a “your call cannot be completed as dialed” message. (And I’m told that I cannot publish this post without noting that 3-14-15 will be a more accurate pi day.)

bystander wrote:Cosmic Variance: Phone Pi: 3.14

JoAnne Hewett wrote:
I’m told that I cannot publish this post without noting that 3-14-15 will be a more accurate pi day.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day wrote:
<<Pi Approximation Day is observed on July 22, because of the Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes' first rough approximation of π as being 22/7. [Archimedes was able a few years later to calculate a much-better approximation of π.] However, this may be considered misleading, as all cited dates are "approximation days" (since π is an irrational number) and 22/7 is actually a closer approximation of π than 3.14 is. Typically, March 14 is more popular for countries using the month/day format and the 22nd of July is more popular for countries using the day/month format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied_piper wrote:
22/7/1376 – PIEd Piper Day

<<William Ramesey's Wormes (1668) — "...that most remarkable story of the Pied Piper that carryed away a hundred and sixty Children from the Town of Hamel in Saxony, on the 22. of July, Anno Dom. 1376. A wonderful permission of GOD to the Rage of the Devil".>>

Sometimes the so-called Pi Minute is also commemorated. This one occurs twice on March 14 at 1:59 a.m., and 1:59 p.m. If π is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making Pi Second occur on March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m. [Sometimes March 14, in the year 1592 at 6:53:58 a.m. is remembered.] If a 24-hour clock is used, Pi Minute occurs just once yearly, on March 14 (3/14) at 1:59. Something interesting is that, in 2010, Daylight Savings Time begins one minute later: March 14, at 2:00 AM.

The first Pi Day celebration was held at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988, with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, then consuming fruit pies. The museum has since added pizza to its Pi Day menu. The founder of Pi Day was Larry Shaw, a now-retired physicist at the Exploratorium who still helps out with the celebrations.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology often mails its acceptance (and rejection) letters to be delivered to prospective students on Pi Day.

On 12 March 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution (HRES 224), recognizing March 14, 2009 as National Pi Day.>>

geckzilla wrote:I am going to make a pecan pi pie today. Photographs will come.

geckzilla wrote:I love giving the gift of pie but you have to come within a reasonable geographic distance to acquire one. So far this year it has included the next door neighbors, owlice, and one of Pat's coworkers who happens to live within biking distance. The crazy guy biked over yesterday not realizing how cold and windy it was and his hands nearly froze off. Pecan Pi Pie is in the oven.

Chris Peterson wrote:

geckzilla wrote:I am going to make a pecan pi pie today. Photographs will come.

Would you like my shipping address?

rstevenson wrote:Next year -- when it will be 3 14 15 -- we should hold an international π pie contest, advertising it through various media and maybe featuring a π pie as an APOD (which will bring in the usual chorus of "That ain't an astronomy picture of the day" complaints.) Think Robert and Jerry would be interested?

Of course, it will have to be on the honour system, since we've no idea whether someone really baked their own pie -- unless you want to send me out to test them all -- a sort of Round The World π Pie Race.

Rob (who is about to go to the store to buy a π pie)

I dunno, I can take 3/14 as pi day because it can be written as 2015 03 14 but when you try to get me to move the year to the end and use month-day-year format, I get agitated.