It's Pi Day!
"The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also just a start,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can't be grasped, six five three five, at a glance,
eight nine, by calculation..."
- Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)
To those who are wracking their brain on why March 14 is Pi Day, then don't. The number is approximately equal to 3.14159, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. A few changes would reveal 3/14. Eureka! This piece of information is neither silly nor trivial in America, mind you.
On March 9, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution, designating the said date as National Pi Day. This was a way of encouraging educators to plan and engage in activities that enables students to know the significance of Pi. In turn, this makes them interested, if not appreciative, of mathematics. So what makes Pi more fascinating than the other mathematical constants? Pi goes back to the dawn of civilization, which can also be said of Pythagoras' constant. There's a mystery behind it, which inspires one to come up with a theory that the constant have set a literary genre. No kidding.
The Babylonians were the first to figure out the equivalence of Pi, believing it to be three. The Egyptians thought otherwise, as they came up with 32/18 (3.16049....). It was not far from what the mathematicians of ancient India computed, which was at 3.162277. Then Archimedes came.
Born in Syracuse, he was one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. His calculation (of the value of the Pi) was more accurate. His method was different from the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Indians, this being one of his major contributions in mathematics. This would seal his legacy, but the mystery behind the symbol remained. There's no need to know, as any attempt would court danger. This is the premise behind Darren Aronofsky's "Pi", where a number theorist believes that everything in nature can be understood through numbers. He meets his match in Pi.
Mike Keith came up with a book, which offered a fresh perspective; he argued that some literary works have been inspired by that constant. It may be a mathematical equivalence of a haiku, but it would be up to literary scholars - and students - to agree (or disagree). Consider one of his examples, a line from Shakespeare's "King Henry IV":
"By the mass, lad, thou sayest true; it is like we shall have good trading that way. But tell me, Hal, art not thou horrible afeard? Thou being heir apparent, could the world pick thee out three such enemies again as that fiend Douglas, that spirit Percy, and that devil Glendower? Art thou not horribly afraid? Doth not thy blood thrill at it?"
Odd, don't you think? Some would include Yann Martel's "Life of Pi", but the titular character's name didn't derive from the constant. If was rather a name of a plush swimming pool in Paris, which Pi's folks fell in love with.
