Happy Pi Day

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510
5820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282
3066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055
5964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527
1201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587
0066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305
4882046652138414695194151160943305727036575959195309218611738193
2611793105118548074462379962749567351885752724891227938183011949
1298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798609437027705
3921717629317675238467481846766940513200056812714526356082778577
1342757789609173637178721468440901224953430146549585371050792279
6892589235420199561121290219608640344181598136297747713099605187
0721134999999837297804995105973173281609631859502445945534690830
2642522308253344685035261931188171010003137838752886587533208381
4206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823537875937519
577818577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989

Pay no attention to those Ides, 3.14 is the true March holiday for geeks.  Pi has been around for nearly 4000 years.  The ancient Babylonians and Egyptians knew about it, and Greek mathematicians refined the concept.

Supposedly the concept is even mentioned in the Bible, prompting the Indiana legislature to submit a bill setting the value of Pi at 3, in accordance with these scriptures – in 1897.  As recently as 1998 there was an Internet meme stating that Alabama was trying to do the same thing.  According to Snopes, this was actually an April Fool’s joke that got out of hand, based loosely on the historical fact of the Indiana action.

But, should you desire a bit more Pi trivia, I leave you with this quiz, created by Eve A. Anderson and Carolyn M. Morehouse, and gleefully stolen harvested from The Math Forum …

1. Who, in 1706, first gave the Greek letter “pi” its current mathematical definition?
   a. Albert Einstein
   b. William Jones
   c. Attila the Hun
   d. Archimedes
   e. Napoleon Bonaparte
2. Pi is transcendental. What does this mean, in mathematics?
   a. It is equal to the ratio of two integers
   b. Its square root is imaginary
   c. It cannot be expressed as an integer, or as a root or quotient of integers
   d. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s favorite number.
3. 1f you calculated the circumference of a circle the size of the known universe, requiring that the answer be accurate to within the radius of one proton, how many decimal places of pi would you need to use? (i.e., 3.14, or 3.1415, or 3.1415926, etc.)?
   a. two million
   b. 39
   c. 48,000
   d. 6 billion
4. What is the earliest known reference to pi in history?
   a. The Rosetta Stone, approx. 200 BC
   b. The Bible
   c. An Egyptian papyrus scroll, written approx. 1650 BC by Ahmes the Scribe
   d. Euclid’s Elements, written in the 3rd century BC
5. People tried for centuries to “square the circle”. What were they trying to do?
   a. Construct a square that perfectly circumscribes (surrounds) a given circle
   b. Determine the value of pi squared
   c. Multiply a circle by itself
   d. Use a straightedge and compass to construct a square exactly equal in area to a given circle
   e. Alter a recipe intended for a round pan so that it would fit exactly into a square pan
6. Some people became mentally deranged when trying to “square the circle”. What was this illness named?
   a. Impossibilius Fittus
   b. Morbus Cyclometricus
   c. Repetitionatis Decimalus
7. Are pi’s digits periodic? In other words, do the digits ever repeat themselves in any pattern?
   a. Yes. The digits repeat themselves every 6,000,000 decimal places
   b. No. Every periodic number is rational, but pi is irrational
   c. Yes. Every infinitely long number repeats itself
   d. Perhaps. Not enough digits of pi have been calculated to know yet
8. What is the current world record for memorization of the decimal places of pi?
   a. 1000 places, by Alexander Craig Aitkin
   b. 4096 places, by Simon Plouffe
   c. 31,811 places, by Rajan Mahadevan
   d. 42,000 places, by Hiroyuki Goto
   e. 56,789 places, by Alfred E. Neuman
9. Pi is an irrational number. What does that really mean?
   a. Its digits cannot be rationed out evenly
   b. Nobody with sound judgement has anything to do with it
   c. it is a real number, but can’t be expressed as a ratio of two integers
10. Among the digits of pi currently known, the concentration of each of the digits 0-9 are pretty close to equal. However, in the first 30 places of pi’s decimal expansion, which digit is completely missing?
    a. 7
    b. 2
    c. 0
    d. 8
11. What is the “formal” definition of pi?
    a. the surface area of a sphere of diameter 22/7
    b. 3.1415926
    c. the radius of a circle
    d. a delicious dessert
    e. the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter
12. Imagine if you wrapped a rope tightly around the earth at the equator. How much longer would you have to make the rope if you wanted it to be exactly one foot above the surface all the way around?
    a. 2 feet
    b. 2r feet, where r is the radius of the earth
    c. r² feet
13. How many hours did it take a supercomputer to calculate pi to 51.5 billion digits, in 1997?
    a. 78 hours
    b. 3 hours
    c. 29 hours

And finally, a couple of videos…

…and supposedly there are LOTS of Pi songs out on YouTube.