March 14th Officially Becomes National Pi Day 321
whitefox writes "The scoop from CNet is that 'The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a resolution introduced two days earlier that designates March 14, 2009 (3/14, get it?) as National Pi Day. It urges schools to take the opportunity to teach their students about Pi and "engage them about the study of mathematics."' The resolution is available online. I doubt it'll ever become a national holiday, but the Pi string in the article is pretty cool in a nerdy sort of way."
But March 14th is already taken! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.steakandbjday.com/
Not every year... (Score:3, Informative)
The last one was March 14, 1592. There will be another in 13917 years.
Caldendar check (Score:3, Informative)
The last one was March 14, 1592.
If we are going to use the Gregorian calendar, then we should probably see what Europe knew about Pi in 1592. According to Pi History [wikipedia.org], there was no significant contribution to the understanding of Pi in Europe after Archimedes until Ludolph van Ceulen [wikipedia.org] came up with a 20-digit approximation, in 1596. I'm afraid he was 4 years to late for Pi day.
Re:From across the pond (Score:4, Informative)
I know just a few Europen languages, but here are some examples: "el 4 de julio", "4. juli" or "4th of July". We use either little endian (4th of July, 2009) or big endian (2009-07-04), but not middle endian (September 11th, 2001) like you do.
The world is bigger than the USA alone... (Score:3, Informative)
This means that every person you know speaks English. This is not the case in Europe...
Re:From across the pond (Score:1, Informative)
ISO date format makes the most sense.
YYYY/MM/DD
Why?
Take a list of dates in that format, remove the separators, and sort them as if they were integers. You now have a chronologically sorted list (either ascending or descending). Genius!
(Captcha: hyphens)
Re:From across the pond (Score:3, Informative)
Re:From across the pond (Score:5, Informative)
Nice!
I am totally in!
Now we only have to manage the silly limitation that April only goes to 30!
Re:From across the pond (Score:3, Informative)
Everyone you know must be American.
Re:From across the pond (Score:3, Informative)
That you can do more things with e. (a^x)' = (a^x)*ln(a) and every formula with the for a^x can be rewritten to an e power. Furthermore e^(i*g) = cos(g) + i*sin(g) and e is used extensively in calculating odds. Pi has its uses but isn't so omnipresent as e is.
Re:But March 14th is already taken! (Score:3, Informative)
4th of July? (Score:3, Informative)
How do you verbally say a date? Every person I know says "March fourteenth two thousand nine", not "fourteenth March two thousand nine".
No actually I always say 14th March and I write it that way as well. That is how it is written and spoken in English. Even you Americans refer to the 4th of July and not July 4 so clearly you used to pronounce it that way but have somehow lost it over the years. So if you are speaking American you are probably correct (with the one exception) but when speaking/writing English the correct way is always 14th March 2009. If you don't knwo any English speakers then there is no reason for you to have known this though.
Re:The world is bigger than the USA alone... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:From across the pond (Score:4, Informative)
that would read 7/2, so it would have to be february 7th.
In Europe (actually, most places outside the US) we write DD-MM-YYYY or similar (DD/MM/YYYY, DD.MM.YYYY etc). This seems more logical to me, as days are smaller than months, and months are smaller than years.
In Japan, and in ISO date format, it's YYYY-MM-DD.
2/7 is the 2nd of July (or July 2nd, in American).
Re:It's a Saturday (Score:5, Informative)
For a variety of reasons, the number 2pi (6.2832...) works out much better as a fundamental constant than Pi, and it simplifies many mathematical formulas. The linked article suggests that 2pi be labeled a 'turn'; so in that sense, 90 degrees is a quarter-turn; etc. Surprisingly insightful.
So while the rest of you jump the gun, I'll be celebrating on June 28th.
Re:But March 14th is already taken! (Score:1, Informative)
No, they should claim the 6th of September
Re:But March 14th is already taken! (Score:3, Informative)
Done right, it will end up in your stomach anyway. So what? :P