geometry – The Finch and Pea

Pi Day 2015

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

If we make the very traditionally assumption that the year is a circle (technically it is an ellipse) with a circumference of 365 days (366 on a leap year):

HAPPY PI DAY!

*14 March as Pi Day is superficial fluff that teaches us nothing about π. Tau Day is also silly, especially since τ unnecessarily complicates the calculation of the area of a circle.

It may officially be Pi Day, but that doesn’t make it right¹. The 14th of March is perhaps the least educational date we could pick for Pi Day. True, π=3.14; and, true, today’s date is 3-14 (using nonsensical American notation). That tells us what π is, approximately, it does not teach us what π means. Continue reading “Today is NOT “Pi Day””