By Samantha Butterfield
Staff Writer
Pie Day is a national holiday that is not that recognized, but it is something that people do enjoy celebrating each year. I remember as a kid going to Marie Calendars with my dad to pick out my favorite pie. I also remember in math class competing with the students around me to try and memorize the most numbers of pi. So in celebration of pi day, here are some interesting facts about pi day!
1. The symbol for Pi has been in use for over 250 years. The symbol was introduced by William Jones, a Welsh mathematician, in 1706. The symbol was made popular by the mathematician Leonhard Euler.
2. Since the exact value of pi can never be calculated, we can never find the accurate area or circumference of a circle.
3. March 14 or 3/14 is celebrated as pi day because 3.14 are the first digits of pi. Math nerds around the world love celebrating this infinitely long, never-ending number.
4. Pi is actually a part of Egyptian mythology. People in Egypt believed that the pyramids of Giza were built on the principles of pi. The vertical height of the pyramids has the same relationship with the perimeter of their base as the relationship between a circle’s radius and its circumference. The pyramids are phenomenal structures and are one of the seven wonders of the world.
5. Physicist Larry Shaw started celebrating 14 March as Pi day at San Francisco’s Exploratorium science museum. There he is known as the Prince of Pi.
6. There is an entire language made from the number Pi. But how is that possible? Well, some people loved pi enough to invent a dialect based on it. In “Pi-lish” the number of letters in each word match the corresponding digit of pi. This first word has three letters, the second has one letter, the third has four letters, and so on. This language is more popular than you might think. Software engineer Michael Keith wrote an entire book, called Not a Wake in this language.