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Videos: Happy Pi Day!

  • Kate Repantis
  • slice.mit.edu
  • 4

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Happy Pi Day! Today MIT celebrates all things pi, one of the world’s most beloved mathematical constants. Defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, pi is approximately 3.14159. Today's publication date and time even reflect pi: 3.14 at 1:59 a.m. EDT.

The MIT community celebrates Pi Day in different ways. Some champion the constant’s zen connections. Enjoy this mathematical meditation on finding your center.

Others feel quite passionate about pi. Amelia Trainer waxes poetic with “Pi, I utter your name and my heart gives off sighs, and I say it once more because my love it now flies for your threes and your one fours and your one fives and nines.” Watch more of her love poem.

For many, pi itself presents a fun challenge. Enjoy this video aired last year on the constant:

Happy Pi Day!

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Comments

Alan Friot

Mon, 03/14/2016 8:24am

It confirms that if you keep going around in circles there is no end. So maybe it is better to be a square? At least you get resolution.

Jeremy Raines,…

Tue, 03/15/2016 9:46am

The evidence is circumferential.

In reply to by Alan Friot

Jeremy Raines,…

Mon, 03/14/2016 5:15pm

In Florida Pi is truly sublime
Especially as the dessert Key Lime

Tom Hafer

Mon, 03/14/2016 11:37am

MIT should celebrate Bruce Dan, who likely held the world record for memorizing digits of pi (a few hundred) back before there was a world record, ie in the mid-late 1960s.

In later years Bruce would reprise his recitation during the pi-athelon we held periodically in which we would pledge a dollar (or more) to MIT for each successful digit recited.

And for those so inclined, here is a pi march that I wrote:

3.14159 - getting started, doing fine

2653589 – now we’ve done another line

7932384 – now we’ve got a little more

6264338 – try to keep these digits straight

3279502 – I can do more, how ‘bout you?

8841971 – rhyming pi is lots of fun

6939937 – good little nerds will go to heaven

5105820 – its been fun, but got to go