It’s March 14th ~ and if you’re a mathy person, you’re probably already baking various number-shaped treats to celebrate Pi Day!
For those who aren’t so mathy…all the fuss is about the date, 3-14, and the fact that this date makes up the first three digits of pi, the mathematical relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle. It goes on after the 3.14, of course…
3.1415926535… and…well…it goes on. You can click here to see the first million digits. Or visit PiDay.org for more pi-related awesomeness.
I’m dedicating today’s Pi Day post to the following people, some real and one made-up:
Real people first… My son and his school team competed in the State MathCOUNTS competition for New York yesterday and did a fantastic job, both concentrating and having fun in what was a pretty high-pressure environment. Go, SMS Team!
Now the made-up person… Claire, the main character in my December figure skating novel, SUGAR AND ICE, isn’t just a skater; she’s also a talented math student who has to juggle her intense new skating schedule with a big "Math out of Bounds" research project on Fibonacci. (Do you know about the Fibonacci sequence? Personally, I think there ought to be a Fibonacci Day, too, but that’s a subject for another post.)
I’ve been reviewing page proofs for SUGAR AND ICE this weekend and had to stop and smile at the part where a friend teases Claire about her passion for math club, calling her Pi-Face.
Claire would love this NPR Pi Day feature I found this morning. It explains a new kind of poetry…pi-ku. It’s like Haiku, only the syllables correspond to the digits in pi. Like so…
Line 1 = 3 syllables
Line 2 = 1 syllable
Line 3 = 4 syllables
My attempts…
Roof-music,
Rain,
Perfect Sunday.
And…
Proofreading
Pi
Makes me crave pie.
So who’s feeling both mathy and poetic enough this morning to give it a try in the comments section? Come on…I double-pi dare you!