Check out the date, history, significance, importance and interesting facts of Pi Day 2022.
Any day that includes fun, learning, and pie is one to remember. Pi is a Greek letter and a mathematical constant that expresses the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Not only that, but it’s also Albert Einstein’s birthday on this day, so it’s a mathematician’s dream come true.
Happy Pi Day 2022 details
| Name | Pi Day |
| Observed by | United States |
| Type | Mathematical |
| Significance | 3, 1, and 4 are the three most significant figures of π in its decimal representation. |
| Celebrations | Pie eating, pi memorization competitions, discussions about π |
| Date | March 14 |
| Next time | March 14, 2023 |
| Frequency | Annual |
| First time | 1988 |
| Related to | Pi Approximation Day |
National Pi Day 2022 : Date
Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (3/14 in the month/day format) since 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant figures of π.
It was founded in 1988 by Larry Shaw, an employee of the Exploratorium. Celebrations often involve eating pie or holding pi recitation competitions.
In 2009, the United States House of Representatives supported the designation of Pi Day. UNESCO’s 40th General Conference designated Pi Day as the International Day of Mathematics in November 2019.
Alternative dates for the holiday include July 22 (22/7, an approximation of π) and June 28 (6.28, an approximation of 2π or tau).
Pi Day is an annual opportunity for math enthusiasts to recite the infinite digits of Pi, talk to their friends about math, and eat pie.
On National Pi Day, mathematicians all across the world commemorate the constant Pi.
For millennia, mathematicians have enjoyed calculating Pi’s record digits. These calculations were done by hand until the 1900s, and they reached records in the 500s.
Celebrate Pi Day with NASA
This year, you can once again join NASA in celebrating Pi Day. The online event runs from March 10 to March 15. There are many resources available, and you can take part in the NASA Pi Day Challenge!
This is the 9th installment of the annual challenge and includes four new illustrated math problems for students to solve. These math problems help students use pi to explore Earth, the moon, Mars and exoplanets. NASA will announce the answers on March 15.
The challenge includes a Teachable Moments article on the science behind the math problems, with free downloads and more.
What is Pi?
Pi (often represented by the lower-case Greek letter π), one of the most well-known mathematical constants, is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
For any circle, the distance around the edge is a little more than three times the distance across.
READ : World Hearing Day 2023: Theme, History, Slogan, Significance
10+ fascinating facts about Pi
1. Pi is an irrational number which can never be expressed as a fraction. It is popularly called the “infinite decimal” among Mathematicians, which means the digits beyond the decimal go for ever and ever.
2. Pi represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter and no matter what size the circle is, the ratio will stay constant.
3. While the ratio may stand for as long as time and space do, the exact value of pi can never be calculated.
4. People compete in memorizing Pi. Rajveer Meena has the record for memorizing the most decimal places of pi at 70,000.
5. British mathematician Wiliam Shanks attempted to find the digits of Pi in 1873 and calculated the number of 707 places. However, he only got the first 527 digits right and one wrong digit invalidated all those that followed. The inaccuracy wasn’t discovered for another 71 years.
6. An entire language is made on the number Pi in which the number of letters in successive words correspond to the digit Pi. Granted, it’s made up. But aren’t all languages made up?
7. The number Pi has been around for longer than Christianity. Actually, much longer. Many records show that the Babylonians knew of Pi four millennia ago. They calculated pi as 3.125.
8. Pi is believed to have guided the principles for building the ahead-of-their-time, enigmatic pyramids of Giza. The height of the pyramids has the same relationship with the perimeter of their base as is the relationship between a circle’s radius and its circumference.
9. In 2008, a mysterious crop circle was found to be a cryptic representation of the first 10 digits of pi.
10. The number 123456 doesn’t appear once in the first million digits of Pi. It’s shocking because the placement of digits does not follow a linear progression and must appear random to the eye.
READ: World Wildlife Day 2022 : Theme, Quotes, Wishes, Messages, Slogans
11. It’s used as stress tests for computers. Computing pi is a kind of “digital cardiogram” for computers.
12. A Givenchy men’s cologne is named pi. So you can smell like pi, too, if you are the intellectual and visionary kind.
13. Pi is also known as Archimedes’ constant or Ludolph’s number.
14. Heroes sometimes use pi. For example, Spock foils an evil computer in Wolf in the Fold (the 14th episode of the 2nd season of the American sci fi TV series Star Trek), by preoccupying it forever, by having it calculate pi’s value.
Pi Day 2022: History
To understand Pi, we must travel back a few thousand years and study this enigmatic number. Archimedes of Syracuse, one of the greatest mathematicians of the ancient world, was the first to compute the value of Pi.
However, it was initially given the name Greek letter by William Oughtred in a book published in 1647, and it was later adopted by the scientific community when Leonhard Euler used the sign in 1737.
Physicist Larry Shaw founded Pi Day in 1988, as part of his great work the ground-breaking science museum Exploratorium in San Francisco. As part of the first Pi Day festivities, both staff and the public marched around one of the circular spaces in the museum while eating fruit pies. Exploratorium continues its Pi Day celebration. You can watch their event live on YouTube at the video at the top of this post.
In the United States, the U.S. House of Representatives officially recognized Pi Day as an annual event – National Pi Day – on March 12, 2009.
Today, many people and institutions celebrate Pi Day, including students, teachers, parents, museums, science centers and planetariums.
Math nerds all over the world are now commemorating the day. Pi Day has become a pop-cultural phenomenon, with people from all around the world participating in events, pranks, observations, and eating as much pie as they can.
National Pi Day 2022: Significance
Pi, the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter, is one of the world’s oldest and most well-known mathematical constants.
It has a value of about 3.14159265. It is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be stated as a ratio of whole numbers and that its decimal representation never stops or repeats.
READ: International Womens Day 2022 – Theme, History | When & Why Celebrated?
A ‘pi planet’
Also, did you know that there’s even a pi planet? It is an exoplanet, known as K2-315b, whose orbital period matches the value of pi. That is, this planet orbits its star every 3.14 Earth-days.
It is, in fact, almost the same size as Earth, with a radius 95% that of our own planet. That’s also about the same size as Venus, and like our nearby sister world, it’s a blisteringly hot place, with temperatures up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 degrees C).
Final Words on PI day: It’s almost time for Pi Day, an annual mathematical event for science lovers. Here’s how to celebrate on March 14 and take part in the NASA Pi Day Challenge!