History of Pi Day: 3.14

This holiday is often overlooked by those who do not speak Greek or those who do not speak Geek… but for the science major, this is a special celebration. Though it is an irregular constant number, regularly and annually on March 14, or 3/14, or 3.14 — we have the first three digits of “Pi.” If one wanted to be precise, and why not, it would be at 15:92 o’clock, or 4:32 pm… and 65.35 seconds, or slightly after 4:33 pm. You get the idea.

Origin of Pi Day

The origin of this geek holiday has been traced to a celebration led by Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988, where he was a physicist. No less than the U.S. House of Representatives boldly stepped out and passed a non-binding resolution recognizing March 14 as Pi Day in 2009. Your tax dollars at work.

Food

Pi Day is gaining traction with purveyors of the circular food.

My local pizza establishment in the vicinity, Il Vicino, is offering a special price on the basic pie, $3.14

Village Inn offers discounts on Pies for Pi Day

Physicists

Two famous physicists have associations with Pi Day:

• Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day, March 14, 1879.
• Stephen Hawking died on Pi Day, March 14, 2018.

Computational

“As we know, the value of pi is a transcendental figure without resolution.”

From this, we might conclude that cloud computing is nothing compared to space computing.

Music

…played at 157 beats per minute, no less (or half of 314). As it turns out, however, Blake wasn’t the first to come up with the idea — composer Lars Erickson wrote his own “Pi Symphony” a few years back, and has now sparked a bit of a copyright spat on YouTube over who actually owns the rights to Pi in musical form.

You can find the Pi Symphony here.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com

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