COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:Infinitely irrational Pi Day

Did you have fun? Happens every March, the parties, the music, the beer, the pie. Oh, yeah, we’re not talking about St. Patrick’s Day, which was yesterday, but Pi Day, which was Wednesday.

Ever heard of it? Neither have I, until this year, when it got a lot of press for some reason.

Those of us who are mathematically challenged, which is being kind in my case, may remember pi from the days when we sat at cramped desks passing notes and glancing at the wall clock every 20 seconds, sometimes referred to as “school.”

Pi is a handy mathematical device, which most of us first learned as 3.14, which grew to 3.1415926 by the time we got to high school. If you multiply the diameter of a circle by pi, you will find the circumference of the circle. I’m not sure why anyone would want to know that, but some people do, and I’m OK with that. You can also use pi to find the area of a circle, which is much more useful, I guess. The area of a circle is pi times the radius of the circle squared, or pi r2, which leads to the very old joke, “Pi r-squared? No, pie are round. Cake are squared.”

Pi was discovered by Archimedes, who discovered and/or invented just about everything Ben Franklin didn’t, which is basically everything. Archimedes, who lived in the 2nd century BC, is usually referred to as Greek, even though he was born and lived his entire life in Sicily, which makes me proud.

He is also known for jumping out of a bathtub and running through the streets of Syracuse (Sicily, not New York) nude as a jaybird, no toga, no nothing, screaming “Eureka!” because he had just figured out his gazillionth problem. Not so proud of that.

Pi Day was founded in 1988 by a science-minded fellow named Larry Shaw at the Exploratorium science learning center in San Francisco. Knowing that most people are as comfortable with math as they are with tarantulas, Larry wanted to teach young people a little about math and let them have some fun doing it.

The first Pi Day was pretty simple. Why March 14? Because pi = 3.14 and March 14 = 3/14. Pretty clever, these mathematicians. The first Pi Day consisted of an exhibit, and then, at the stroke of 1:59:26 p.m. (pi = 3.1415926), Larry and his staff lead all those present in a big circular march around the hall, which ended at one table after another of — anyone? Pies, of course.

In the 19 years since, Pi Day has grown like an irrational, infinite decimal expansion at schools, museums and science centers across the country, especially at temples to science like Caltech and MIT. Soon after it started, someone pointed out that Albert Einstein’s birthday was March 14, oddly enough, and many Pi Day parties today include singing “Happy Birthday” to Albert. The original dessert pies have been expanded to pizzas, tamale pies, sweet potato pies, meat pies, virtually anything that is round and can be ingested.

You think 3.1415926 is hard to remember? It’s a picnic in the park compared with the value of pi that mathematicians use when they’re sitting around talking, drinking coffee and telling the one about the pig, the rabbi and the radius — 3.14159265358979323846264338 327950288. You think that’s long? To borrow a line from the number-heads, “Whaddayounutz2?”

Mathematically speaking, the value of pi has an “infinite decimal expansion,” which means it goes on forever — and it’s an “irrational number,” which means you just can’t reason with it, especially in the morning.

And that brings us full-circle (sorry, had to do it) to Pi Day.

In most places, Pi Day just wouldn’t be Pi Day without a contest to see who can correctly rattle off the most digits in the pi sequence, which computers have run out to over a trillion. No one has rattled off that many, as far as I know. Around the world, obsessive-compulsive math fans gather to see who can produce the really big numbers.

The unofficial world record belongs to Akira Haraguchi, a mental health counselor in Japan, which could be a handy occupation if he keeps this up. Last fall, Haraguchi correctly recited 100,000 pi digits in a single 16-hour session, which shows that no matter where you are in the world, there are people with not enough to do.

If you think pi fans are dull and geeky, you are sadly mistaken.

They have their own website, www.piday.org, which they bill as “The official website for March 14,” with a countdown clock until the next Pi Day, which as of this writing, read “361 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes until Pi Day 2008.” If that doesn’t get you tingly all over, nothing will. You can buy pi items from the pi shop, including pi ties, mugs and a pi T-shirt ($15.50 plus shipping) with the first 5,000 digits of pi on the back.

There is a link for people who want to post a message about “Why I love Pi,” which range from funny: “because I’m irrational too”; to silly: “because it’s sexy”; to nonsensical: “because without it the world would stop spinning and you could not measure it as a circle.” All righty, then.

Finally, we even have a local hero for Pi Day fans right here in Newport-Mesa land — Miss Jamie Searles of Harbor Day School. Jamie was crowned Pi Queen on Wednesday for the second year in a row for correctly naming a very impressive 801 digits, which is roughly 798 digits better than I could have done. You count, girl.

And that, give or take a few digits, is the story of pi. Didn’t get it then, don’t get it now, but with Akira and Jamie around, it’s all good.

I gotta go.