What I’ve Learned Since Last Pi Day

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Greetings after a long but not-so-quiet Pi Day “off-season”!  It’s been quite a year, and there are many new stories to tell about the people and particulars of Pi.  I hope to impart each of them to you in greater depth here at TeachPi.org soon, but just to share a taste of what’s been happening, here is what I’ve learned since last Pi Day…

  • An artist in Seattle has been assembling the digits of Pi in 9-inch squares of fabric sent to her by folks around the country and world, and will be unveiling it on Pi Day.  She’s surpassed 1,000!
  • A man in India has been working diligently for the past 26 years to prove to the world that Pi is not actually transcendental, and that the true value of Pi is not 3.1415926…, but rather 3.1464466… Hmm.  More on this friendly fellow another time.
  • A very young girl in Louisiana is poised to take the digit-memory world by storm, having already recited more than 600 digits in – get this – 1st grade!  She is in 2nd grade this year, so watch out, kid memorizers at the top of the rankings!
  • There is an obscure phenomenon known as “self-locating strings” of Pi digits, which I investigated from scratch after receiving a question from a Pi fan.  I then briefly thought I had kind of discovered the first few of these strings, but was quickly and appropriately humbled after a chat with a Harvard mathematician friend, who knows a bit more about this, and pretty much everything, than I do!
  • The 16th root of 90,000,000 is 3.1415.  Go figure!

What stories from the last year do you have to share?  As our Pi community expands, and reaches an unprecedented peak of visibility on the big 3.14.15, there will undoubtedly be countless new stories of Pi intersecting with our lives, our students, our culture, and our world.  Please, by all means, let the storytelling begin!  Please send over any stories of Pi in your life, whether on Pi Day or on any other day of the year.

Your Pi pal year-round,

Luke

Plans for Pi Day ’14?

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falling-digits-calendarWhat are you up to this Pi Day season? Each year is unique for me, as I seek new audiences with whom to share in the joy of our crazy number. In 2013, I spent Pi Day in Manhattan, speaking to a couple hundred middle schoolers who were on a field trip to the National Museum of Mathematics (or MoMath for short). It’s an amazing and still quite new institution that you should most certainly visit the next time you’re in the Big Apple. Later that day, I spoke at a private company’s Pi Day celebration. Pretty cool that Pi Day isn’t just celebrated in classrooms, eh?

This year, I’ve got three events lined up, all of which are in my home state of Colorado.

    • On March 6, I’ll be sharing in some early Pi Day fun with students at a local elementary school.
    • On March 13, I’ll be talking about all things Pi on Colorado Matters, a daily program on Colorado Public Radio.
    • On March 14, I’ll be giving a guest lecture at 4:00pm in the Math Department at the University of Colorado in Boulder (open to the public).

I’m excited to have three very different events on the slate this year!  And my eyes and ears are always open for last-minute invitations and requests, or for ideas about where I might spend my Pi Day next year!  (We’ll come back to the important topic of Pi Day ’15, or 3.14.15, in a future post!)

Okay, that’s plenty about me.  What are you and your students (or your friends, family, or coworkers) up to this Pi Day?  Send over your fun stories, either before or after, and perhaps we’ll collect enough to warrant a dedicated page here on TeachPi.org where they can be shared and enjoyed by everyone else!

Your Pi pal,

Luke

TeachPi.org’s New Look

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Welcome to the new and improved TeachPi.org! Like a much-loved teddy bear, the site has been a companion to many teachers and Pi lovers for several years now, but it had been stitched together (with love) in an earlier time, and was starting to show some signs of wear and tear. So, I decided that it was time to invest in the future of TeachPi.org and in those who continue to enjoy it and contribute to it year after year.

While you will find all of the same content and features from the old site here, this new platform will allow me both to add new things, and to interact with you, more easily than ever before! This blog itself is one such new feature. I plan to engage more often and more directly with you, and to bring you more stories – both from the world of Pi history, and from my own journeys as a Pi Day speaker and performer. (Yes, I am MC314, and MC314 is me. More on that later.)

Hopefully this initial post whets your appetite a bit for what’s to come. The great thing about Pi is that it’s always growing (in digits, significance, fan base, etc.), and so we all have good reason to keep growing in our collective knowledge of it, and in our enthusiasm for celebrating with number lovers of all ages!

Stay tuned as Pi Day ’14 approaches…