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Happy Pi Day: Interesting Facts



Hmmm....Pie. Oh, I mean Pi! Sorry, but we're here to talk about the mathematical constant, not the scrumptious desert you see above (sadly, there is no national day for apple pie...yet). Anyways today, we're going to highlight the intriguing history of Pi and some interesting facts about it! 

A History

Unlike most numbers, Pi is special (hopefully √2 isn't reading). The Babylonians were some of the first to recognize Pi, approximating it to about 3.125 (not bad for a civilization that just learnt how to write). Now of course, we know literally billions of digits of Pi and computing new digits of Pi has actually become a test to challenge a computer's computing power. Also, it's given irrational number enthusiasts (read: nerds) across the globe a new hobby (trust me: chicks dig decimal recitations of numbers with no recurring patterns :). 

But seriously, Pi is pretty awesome. Besides giving us the ability to impress people at parties (yes, I'm talking about real hardcore parties here), it has become integral to mathematics, physics, and just about everything else. It's a constant used in trigonometry (insert nightmare flashbacks to high school), astronomy, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, number theory, just to name a few. 

Interesting Facts 

  • The practice of memorizing digits of Pi is called piphilology (yes, that is actually a thing). 
  • Lu Chao set the record by reciting 67,890 digits of Pi in 24 hours and 4 minutes (see, now here's a guy who's actually doing something with his life)
  • Carl Sagan wrote a book called Contact in which the creator of the universe hid a secret message somewhere in the digits of pi. 
  • Google actually made a bid for 3.14159 billion (first few digits of Pi) for Nortel's patents  
  • MIT holds the record for the greatest sports cheer of all time. It goes "Cosine, Secant, Tangent, Sine, 3.14159!" 
  • It's pretty much impossible to measure the circumference of a circle exactly since, to do that, you'd need Pi, and Pi goes on forever. 
  • William Shanks worked tirelessly for years trying to calculate the first 707 digits of Pi by hand. It was later realized that he made a mistake along the way on one digit, so the rest of his work was all wrong! 
  • According to history, Archimedes, a famous mathematician, was so busy with his work on Pi that he didn't even notice it when the Romans captured his city right outside of his front door! When the Romans barged into his house, Archimedes apparently started yelling "Don't touch my circles!" The Romans responded by promptly chopping off his head.

Oh, and one last thing to blow your mind. Check out Pi reflected in a mirror. 


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