It was only recently that many of us put away our Square Root Day decorations. Yet, it is now time to celebrate Pi day in all of its irrational glory. The irrational number is rounded off to 3.14, making March 14th the special day for all math geeks — and circle circumference fanatics.
Many people loath Pi Day due to the pressure of finding that special gift to celebrate the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Most pies are ideal for the parties but stores have destroyed the holiday by making it too commercial. Kids just want to grab their circular gifts without any thought of the true meaning of Pi Day.
This year, Congress voted 391-10 vote to designate today as the official Pi Day for the first time in history. Obviously the anti-Pi lobby was able to snare ten members who continue their anti-circumferencial and anti-Euclidean politics. After all, Indiana once tried to declare Pi as 3.2 in 1897. This was done despite the fact that Pi is actually 3.14159.
The anti-Pi coalition includes Jason Chaffetz (R, Utah), Jeff Flake (R., Az.), Dean Heller (R. Montana), Timothy Johnson (R., Ill.); Jeff Miller (R., Fl.); Randy Neugebauer (R., TX). Ron Paul (R., TX), Ted Poe (R. TX), Bill Shuster (R., Pa.) and Mike Pence (R., Ind.). It is ironic that the opposition is entirely made up of Republicans despite the practical alliance with Clintonian Triangulation politics.
Ron Paul’s work for the anti-Pi forces may be an expression of a libertarian disgust with state-sponsored mathematics.
The stalwart Pi-man is Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash) proudly admits that he is “kind of geeked up about it and that he has “been fascinated by pi since I was a kid. It blows my mind. It’s lovely. The fact that it’s sort of this infinite number. I just think it’s this magical thing. … There’s a real beauty to mathematics.” What is really amazing is that Baird not only was able to get a date in High School but marry a real, non-inflatable woman.
Notably, March 14th is also Albert Einstein — making this day of unspeakable joy for the geek class.
Yet, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) insists that this was a bait-and switch: “I thought I was voting for p-i-e.”
Pi party animals can be a bit out of control today with Pi eating contests and Pi in the Face attacks. Many can be seen in alleys and science ghettos calculating Pi, which has been calculated to over 1 trillion digits past the decimal. Do not get sucked into such calculations, which have been known to turn math fanatics into virtual calculating vombies. “High on Pi” is a common police call.
“Pi eaters” are often found near libraries and science labs. They should not be approached while calculating.
For eligible men and women, be particularly careful about math geeks inviting you up to “see my Euclidean space.”
For the full story, click here.
Wake me for Avagadro day.
just to claripie. though i’m of some german heritage, i’m not one of those nasty trolls. i’ll certainly refrain from commenting if only law scholars are welcome. have a hap-pi day. long live justice.
thanky, 😉
happy birthday to any of you Pi-C’s.
Pi Day? Please, just thinking about Pi day makes me think of high school algebra and that is a very bad memory!!
It is amazing the the Von Troll family members cannot refrain from their antics even in a thread about Pi day!
Well, pardon me?, your pie-in-the-face recommendation sure bests mine by a methane fresh country mile.
cow pies are udderly impressive, especially after all of this rain.
Furthermore, I vote that those Republican politicians deserve a face pieing with a Pork pie for their anti-pi piousness.
If Pork pies are unavailable, because of adherence to anti-pork legislation (Ha!), then I suggest Rhubarb or Shoofly Pies instead.
Pie r good.
it’s always twoday.
But…today is Happy Saturday not Happy Piday, which was yesserday.
Unfortunately we won’t be celebrating Pi day here in the Fella household, as our member in Congress, Gary Miller, likely missed the party, like he has for 50% of the votes so far this year, and did not forewarn us.
It’s no fun living in a Republican dominated Congressional district, where your representative, when he bothers to come in to the office, invariably makes the wrong decision, voting along the GOP party line. But I suppose Mr. Miller’s outside business interests are more important than his constituents.
Have you heard of Daniel Tammet?
“On March 14th 2004 (3/14 in US notation – known as International Pi Day) Daniel set a new British and European record when he recited the number pi from memory to 22,514 decimal places in a time of 5 hours, 9 minutes.”
http://www.optimnem.co.uk/pi.php
He did this in his head. He has Asperger syndrome, part of the autism spectrum, usually higher functioning. He sees numbers as colors and shapes. He explains this in his book “Born on a Blue Day.” It’s incredible.
This is very interesting
A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.
As I grew up, I never ques tioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger…he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.
If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped
Talking, but Dad didn’t seem to mind.
Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stra nger to leave.)
Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home… Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn’t permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular Basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.
I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked… And NEVER ask ed to leave.
More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents’ den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.
His name?…. ..
We just call him ‘TV.’
(Note: This should be required reading for every household in America !)
He has a wife now….We call her ‘Computer.’
Kids today are shallow.
Lips who touch Pi will never…
That caps lock key works both ways, troll. Being loud doesn’t distract from your weak personal attacks. I’d expect your lot to have realized by now the ad hominem does not work here, but that’d be expecting you to be using logic and the evidence of how people who use this as their sole tactic or preferred position in retreat on this site get REPEATEDLY trashed. Go back to copy & pasting. It’s more effective and just as obnoxious. For propagandists, you show a remarkable lack of understanding of the tools you misuse. You’ll never win the war with weak tactics that never seem to address the issues or the logic of analysis. Which is a good thing. For We the People. Competence is a wonderful thing. I suggest you acquire some. That’s not a personal attack, but rather a critique of your methodology.
MR. TURLEY YOU LOOKED ABSOLUTELY RAVISHIN ON MACHAEL MADDOWS SHOW EXCEPT YOU NEED TO LOSE SOME WEIGHT, GET RID OF THE GRAY HAIR (IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A BUSH SUPPORTER) AND GET AN EARRING, MAYBE EVEN A NOSE PIN.
A TATTOO WOULDN’T HURT WITH OUR AUDIENCE EITHER! IN FACT, WEAR SHORT SLEEVES SO THEY CAN SEE IT!
WONDERBUS!
I think the prof should take out a cowpyright on his promotions of pi day, or maybe a co-pi-right.
See:
http://jonathanturley.org/?s=cowpyright
This is a hilarious true story of genius gone wrong (well sort of!)
“Gregory Volfovich Chudnovsky recently built a supercomputer in his apartment from mail-order parts. Gregory Chudnovsky is a number theorist. His apartment is situated near the top floor of a run-down building on the West Side of Manhattan, in a neighborhood near Columbia University. Not long ago, a human corpse was found dumped at the end of the block. The world’s most powerful supercomputers include the Cray Y-MP C90, the Thinking Machines CM-5, the Hitachi S-820/80, the nCube, the Fujitsu parallel machine, the Kendall Square Research parallel machine, the nec SX-3, the Touchstone Delta, and Gregory Chudnovsky’s apartment. The apartment seems to be a kind of container for the supercomputer at least as much as it is a container for people.
Gregory Chudnovsky’s partner in the design and construction of the supercomputer was his older brother, David Volfovich Chudnovsky, who is also a mathematician, and who lives five blocks away from Gregory. The Chudnovsky brothers call their machine m zero. It occupies the former living room of Gregory’s apartment, and its tentacles reach into other rooms. The brothers claim that m zero is a “true, general-purpose supercomputer,” and that it is as fast and powerful as a somewhat older Cray Y-MP, but it is not as fast as the latest of the Y-MP machines, the C90, an advanced supercomputer made by Cray Research. A Cray Y-MP C90 costs more than thirty million dollars. It is a black monolith, seven feet tall and eight feet across, in the shape of a squat cylinder, and is cooled by liquid freon. So far, the brothers have spent around seventy thousand dollars on parts for their supercomputer, and much of the money has come out of their wives’ pockets.”
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1992/03/02/1992_03_02_036_TNY_CARDS_000362534
Here’s an oldie in honor of the occasion:
Mathematician: Pi r squared
Baker: No! Pie are round, cakes are square!
roflmao
Nice job, Prof!
And since Pi is a beauty in mathematics, I present a gift of beauty in celebration of beauty. You can say let them eat Pi, but I say let them eat Phi.
http://goldennumber.net/neophite.htm