When did you last think of pi? Not this kind of pie…

Pi Day is coming on Saturday, March 14.It is celebrated on March 14th (3/14) every year, around the world. Who knew?

Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159. (Remember pi-r-square?)

I am away from home, teaching at the Gulf States Quilting Association Seminar in Metairie, LA. Steve will be home with friends celebrating a Pi Day breakfast of pancakes and sausage (both round, in honor of pi), with eggs and champagne. I will think of them fondly when my alarm goes off in class :-).

My friend, Elizabeth, a fellow pi(e) enthusiast, has found a few fun pi facts that she said I could share with you:

• A circular room in the Palais de la Découverte science museum in Paris is called the pi room. The room has 707 digits of pi inscribed on its wall (though there is an error beginning at the 528th digit, thanks to William Shanks’ erroneous calculations).
• In an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock commands an evil computer to compute pi to the last digit—which it cannot do, of course, because, as Spock explains, “the value of pi is a transcendental figure without resolution.” I remember this episode!
• Givenchy’s PI cologne for men is advertised as a scent that “embodies the confidence of genius.”
• Both MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have cheers that include “3.14159.”

If I was going to be home, I’d make one of these. It’s probably good I’m not home.