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Math

Pi Day 2022 Has Begun (msn.com) 95

Posted by EditorDavid from the circling-back dept.
Pi day is here — 3/14. And to celebrate, NASA released their ninth annual NASA Pi Day Challenge — "some math problems related to current and future NASA missions."

MIT Bloggers released a videogame-themed video to welcome the class of 2026.

If you Google "pi day" (or Pi), you're given an interactive doodle that (when you click the pi symbol in the upper-left) presents a Simon-like game challenging you to type in approximations of pi to an ever-increasingnumber of digits.

Guinness World Records points out that the most accurate value of pi is 62,831,853,071,796 digits, "achieved by University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland) in Chur, Switzerland, on 19 August 2021." (Note: the number of digits looks suspiciously significant....)

And USA Today published an article which shares the history of how Pi Day got started. Former physicist Larry Shaw, who connected March 14 with 3.14, celebrated the first Pi Day at the Exploratorium with fruit pies and tea in 1988. The museum said Shaw led Pi Day parades there every year until his passing in 2017.

In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution marking March 14 as National Pi Day.

The date is significant in the world of science. Albert Einstein was born on this day in 1879. The Exploratorium said it added a celebration of Einstein's life as part of its Pi Day activities after Shaw's daughter, Sara, realized the coincidence. March 14 also marks the death of renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who passed away in 2018.
And "For those who don't enjoy math, you get pie," the article quips, noting that numerous pizza chains and restaurants are offering appropriately-adjusted one-day sale prices on pizza (and fruit) pies.

Instacart has even released a list showing which pie flavors enjoy the highest popularity over the national average in each of America's 50 states. ("New York — Boston Cream Pie. Washington — Marionberry Pie....")
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Pi Day 2022 Has Begun More

Pi Day 2022 Has Begun

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  • In the UK, pi day is approximately 22nd July.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      You can argue for big-endian (2022.03.14) , or little-endian ( 14-03-2022), but starting in the middle with dates is just plain stupid.

      (big-endian obviously makes more sense though, easy ascii sorting)

      • Not when you have done it that way all of your life. Smallest number first, month, then date, then biggest number last, year. Just because you've never done it that way doesn't make it "stupid." It just makes you look small minded if you're unable to see multiple ways of doing something.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )
          I have done it that way all of my life, but I prefer to write YYYY-MM-DD now. MM-DD vs DD-MM will always have ambiguous dates. I prefer 4-digit years and a year/month/day order because it sorts in order and because no-one does YYYY-DD-MM, so the days and months are not ambiguous.
        • I'm under the impression that most English speakers use "date" to be year and month and day of month.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bws111 ( 1216812 )

        Here in 'stupid' America, we have our calendars organized by month. If someone asks me if I am busy on 3/14, I first look for the 'March' page, then look for the date. I guess you must have your calendars organized by date, so you first look for the '14' page, then look for March? Oh, you don't do that? So why the fuck isn't the thing you look for first specified first?

        • Most of the world will ask if you are busy on March 14th. That's why we look at the March page.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bws111 ( 1216812 )

            Ah, so the (logical) way you speak dates is month first, but when you write dates you reverse the order. And this makes sense because...

          • Data please. I would generally ask if you're busy on the 14th of March (although I can cope with both). I think you are projecting.

            • Writing dd-mm is always stupid because it's opposite how we represent digit values in numbers.

              Logically it should be yy-mm-dd, and any other order is silly. But since 99% of the time we don't care about year, in the US we tend to tack it onto the end as an afterthought because it's least important even though it has the largest value.

              The UK format is dumb ALL the time, the US format is only dumb when year is specified.

        • Here in 'stupid' America, we have our calendars organized by month.

          You mean year, then month. The fact that many discussions are about the current year so that step is often omitted doesn't change the fact that you first have to find the calendar for the correct year, then look up the month, then find the date.

          So, you're arguing that calendars drive Americans to use big-endian dates. I can buy that. What doesn't make sense is that we then write the year down last.

      • Just be glad date format doesn't include day of week. How about the 2nd Monday of the 3rd month in 2022? Or 7th day of the 2nd week of the 3rd month in 2022?

        If you are checking to see which bills are due this month. Days are too specific and years are too vague. Months are where it is at.

        Remembering someone's birthday usually starts with which month the thing is in.

        There are use cases for every order of dates.

    • No, it's on the 31st of April. ;-)

    • As an approximation it;s actually more accurate than 3.14. It's 0.04% too high whereas 3.14 is 0.05% too low.

    • 22/7! Doh! But that's not ideal because it's during the summer. Having Pi Day in March lets the occasion be used to drive interest in math in schools.

      For a related reason, Mole Day (a holiday used to drive interest in chemistry) in the US is celebrated in October (10/23) rather than June (6/02). Only a few K-12 schools are already dismissed for the summer by June 2, but even if schools are still in session they're likely to be too busy with preparation for final exams to have time for something like Mole Da

  • Pi day is here — 3/14

    IMO 3/14 is a really crappy approximation of pi.

  • Does it need another failed spacecraft for NASA to get with the world and use sensible units and date formats ?
    .

    • Came here to say this.

    • You can just celebrate 22/7 day instead.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Malc ( 1751 )

      Given that parts of Asia, including China, write dates in the form yyyy-mm-dd, you might find you're in a minority. Drop the year from that format and you find the Chinese and Japanese are speaking the same language as Americans.

      • yyyy-mm-dd is handy for machines.

        dd-mm is best for people.

        mm-dd is stupid.

        • The logical order is largest value first, just like how we write numbers. dd-mm is always stupid
          • The logical order is with the highest level of information first. In many cases, this may well be the date / day of the month, like when it's already clear which month it will take place in.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          When do you ever care what the day is before the month? Are your calendars organized by date, then month?

          • When I have to look up something in a calendar, I'll have to convert anyway because approximately no calendar uses month numbers: they all use month names.
            Also, the most frequent lookups are within the same month, so I mostly toss out the month immediately.

        • "monthname day" is best for humans as it removes any confusion about date styles.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Chaset ( 552418 )

            Note that not all languages give names to months. The Chinese and Japanese (at least) just call them Month 1, Month 2, etc. [I think the Japanese did use to have names for the months of the lunar calendar, but it's only used in poetry and artistic literature these days.]

        • >dd-mm is best for people.

          dd-mm is best for you. FTFY.

          If only there was a way to customize [man7.org] the date presentation... /s

          Are you the same dumbass that demands everyone should use comma , for thousands separator and a period for a radix point? Europe would like to have word with you. They use 1.234.567,89 while the US uses 1,234,567.89. There is no absolute for presentation, only tradition with what you grew up with and are used to.

          Ditto for dates. Not everyone thinks the same way as you. That doesn't mak

          • Pipe down you stupid little prick, the grownups are talking.

            • Found the myopic child throwing a tantrum who thinks there is only ONE way, their way, is the "correct" one.

              Someday when you grow up and stop with ad hominem attacks you will realize there are multiple standards. Will that day be today?

              • You wrote: "Get off your fucking high horse already."

                Then you wrote: "stop with ad hominem attacks".

                YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT.

  • Should have been Washington, DC. Sounds like a setup...

  • Observed (Score:3)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday March 14, 2022 @08:30AM (#62355681) Journal
    So far most of the comments are snark about the illogic of Americans doing dates as MM/DD(/YYYY), rather than the more common and systematic DD/MM(/YYYY) used in other countries. I'll just leave that be.

    But there are lots of holidays whose observance vary from country to country. So, in that case, Pi Day can be observed on the 3rd day of the 14th month everywhere else.
    • Look, we all need to switch to the YYYYMMDD format. It's the only one that sorts correctly.
      • Why couldn't you find a date sorting algorithm on stack exchange?

        • The great part about date sorting algorithms is if you don't like the answer you can just change the system locale and get a different one.

        • Why couldn't you find a date sorting algorithm on stack exchange?

          I use YYYYMMDD as a file-naming convention (for certain types of information) because it sorts my directory/folder listings by default, without requiring any algorithm.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      If someone asks you if you are free on 14/3, which do you look up first, the '3' part, or the '14' part?

    • Naturally, for this you would need to adopt the Baha'i calendar [wikipedia.org].

      Then observe that day with a beautiful speech.

    • I force everyone I interact to use their brains with YYYY-mm-dd.

    • So far most of the comments are snark about the illogic of Americans doing dates as MM/DD(/YYYY), rather than the more common and systematic DD/MM(/YYYY) used in other countries.

      It's not just the order which is wrong it's the operation. 3/14 is a terrible approximation for pi, whereas 22/7 is much closer. Now if you used a '.' as the date separator as some people do you may have a point but confusing fractions and decimals is a rookie mistake.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      YYYY/MM/DD is the most logical and consistent. Same order as HH:MM:SS. Also an ISO standard.

      Japan uses YYYY/MM/DD and I'm sure some other countries must too.

      • If you abbreviate that to YY/MM/DD, you should probably be thrilled that we are getting close to 22/7/1.

        Otherwise everyone will be waiting a long time for another pi day.

    • Honestly I'm more upset that Americans have the disrespect not to remember the victims of a brutal terror attack. The 9th of November came and went last year, and every year prior without any ceremony at all.

      Poor form.

    • ..the issue is it's ONLY USAians who use this format, not Americans, no-one else in the Americas do

      One country celebrates this holiday today, everybody else who celebrates it uses a different day, but USA!USA!USA!

  • Meh (Score:2)

    by srussia ( 884021 )
    Tau Day is literally double the fun!

  • One of the first programmes I wrote on my new home computer calculated a million digits of Pi. I used a fairly old variant of the arctangent method. Convergence is not fast, but it gets there in the end. If I recall, it took seven hours. I could have used a much faster algorithm, due to Ramanujan, but the formula looked completely potty. He was famous for that sort of thing.

    Calculating a million digits of Pi is of course pointless, in that practically all applications of that mathematical constant can be me

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by irchans ( 527097 )

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      pi/4 = 4 arctan(1/5) - arctan(1/239)

      arctan(x) = sum( (-1)^(n+1) x^(2n-1)/(2n-1), n=1 to infinity)

      could be used to get around 100,000 digits without too much difficulty.

      • I don't recall the details, but the formula looks familiar. I think you can prove the validity of such formulae by geometric means, so it is very much old-fashioned maths, which this old engineer can comprehend. When I look at a formula like this, I wonder what is so magic about the number 239, and how does that relate to a fundamental irrational number. Is this just a happy coincidence, like 22/7?

  • March 14 is already over, your just stuck in the past.
  • Pi day is irrational.

  • Microsoft Outlook also thinks it's St Patrick's Day in Canada, so double woohoo

  • Pi day is a great time to come together as fellow citizens of science and general nerdom. Yet we're still largely not seeing any mod points. Is the kremlin gaming the system to mod everything back down to 1 or 2? Or is nothing funny, insightful, or interesting anymore? Definitely an off-topic, and slightly tongue-in-cheek, complaint. But I am curious. According to the metamod page, only a handful of comments over the last day appear to have any moderation at all! On this pi day will we finally learn w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Oh my. I'm formally turning in my nerd card. That should be three times the diameter! I swear I know that pi is 3. Really!

    • Some users are still getting them I guess, but I haven't seen any for half a year. Used to get them regularly. Perhaps the old slashdot code hit some arbitrary internal limit and until that is fixed only new accounts get them or something.

      -or something posted wasn't liked and I'm just shadow banned from mod points :D

      • I still get them and have a fairly old account, so I doubt it's your account age.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          I used to get them regularly too before a couple of weeks ago.

          So far on this story there is only 1 downvote that I can find (-1), and only one post has been upvoted., Something is definitely not right. No funny mods, interesting, informative, insightful at all. On any story I've seen in the last few days.

          Editors, please inform us as to what is going on. If there are no moderation happening, then Slashdot is not working and will fail.

  • It's pi day. Surprisingly, so far no mention of the Raspberry Pis in orbit.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-en... [bbc.com].

  • It's worth noting that all record-breaking calculations of pi in the past few decades have been based on the work of Canadian mathematicians (and brothers) Peter Borwein [wikipedia.org] and Jonathan Borwein [wikipedia.org].

    They developed an algorithm [wikipedia.org] which, according to Peter's bio on Wikipedia, "applies Chebyshev polynomials to the Dirichlet eta function to produce a very rapidly convergent series suitable for high precision numerical calculations".

  • Pi day is racist and cultural appropriation. I, a righteous true believer, celebrate e day, Feb 17.

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