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."
Re:Not every year... (Score:4, Interesting)
Naw, not really. They should just make it like Mol Day, in October. Avogadro's Number is 6.02 x 10^23, so Mol Day is celebrated on 10/23 from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m.
You could celebrate Pi Day on 3/14 from 1:59 a.m. until 1:59 p.m. I suppose that means that children with late-afternoon math classes miss out, though. Maybe it could be like New Year's Eve and the kids are encouraged to spend the day preparing and then at 1:59 p.m. everybody shouts "Happy Pi Day!" and that's when the real [math] party starts.
Re:From across the pond (Score:2, Interesting)
MM/DD makes more sense. How do you verbally say a date? Every person I know says "March fourteenth two thousand nine", not "fourteenth March two thousand nine".
Many years ago I found an article about how dates SHOULD be written. Since time is always largest to smallest, HH/MM/SS, dates should be formatted the same way. Likewise, UNIX time is the same way with the smaller values to the right and larger ones to the left.
Knowing all of this, and to be a slight pain, when I purchased my home I signed all dates in YY/MM/DD format. The mortgage company said that the person that had to review and file the paper work was going to be driven nuts ;)
no the celebration is at 4pm (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it doesn't matter, because after you've taken care 3 and 14, you still have the rest of the decimal precision to consider: .0015926...
To be certain not to miss the critical moment, the students would have had to have been celebrating at some point between 137 and 138 seconds past midnight this morning.
since the 3 and the 14 part are in different units one might as well continue that strategy. If you celebrate at 4 pm then on a 16:00 hour clock that is 15:16 to give
3:14:16
Re:From across the pond (Score:2, Interesting)
Not according to the United States Social Security Administration. My birthday is (according to my parents), April 30th. SS has it has April 31st. I cannot file taxes on line, or do many of those other "silly" things since my validation fails. Numerous attempts to call SS have failed, even though I politely explain that THIS CAN'T POSSIBLY BE MY FAULT that they have my birthday listed as April 31st.
I once braved the social security office, filled out an SS5, WAITED FOR LIKE 5 HOURS TO hand someone my form and validate my ID. I got it returned with, "we cannot process this form."
I'm dumbfounded by this. Now I'm trying to figure out if I can use it to my advantage.......
Re:But March 14th is already taken! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's a Saturday (Score:3, Interesting)
Congresscritters can't do math; they have no idea of the significance of 22/7.
Anyway, March 14 is Pi day because it can be written 3.14.