PicoBlog

This Pi Day post is an edited and expanded version of last year’s Pi Day post.

It has been an extremely difficult month so far, for reasons I wrote about recently. So I am delighted for the timing of Pi Day; I need a nerd holiday right now.

In the US, where we tend to write dates in a month/day format, instead of a day/month format, today’s date is written as 3/14 or 3.14.

The mathematical constant, π, has a value of approximately 3.14, so today is celebrated by math nerds everywhere as π day.

I can only speak for myself, of course, but I suspect that people who truly love mathematics are so used to being weird in this respect that one reason why π Day took off as a meme is simply that it’s an excuse to geek out with minimal fear of social repercussions. That’s certainly a major reason why I love π Day!

I love mathematics so much that I wanted to help others learn the mental shortcuts and flexibility that I developed over years of intense studying, so last year I started a new series for paid subs, “How to Not Suck at Mathematics.”

The first five entries are not behind the paywall and are accessible here, from part 5 (which is its own thing, a response to the lament of not being a “math person”). So far it’s covered a refresher — with tips on how to think about these things in the way most likely to make it accessible and start to feel intuitive — of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions. The series has also taught the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, which is the major key of mathematical fluency, and shown how this way of thinking about math makes math easier. It’s also provided several frames for how the sign rules work (why positive times negative is negative, and so forth), explained the common core “box method” of multiplication, worked readers through one of the number theory problems used for training the US Math Olympiad team, and taught how and why the divisibility rules for 3 and 9 work — how and why you can tell that 324 is divisible by both 3 and 9 because 3 + 2 + 4 = 9, which is divisible by both 3 and 9. And the most recent post used the wrapping of a birthday gift for President Gator to start to make algebra make sense.

Future posts will work through more algebra, trigonometry, geometry, and even a little calculus — and yes, you will understand it!

These graphics show the meaning of pi: a ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Calculating that ratio will always have the same result, no matter how big or small the circle in question is.

π is infinite, and memorizing the digits of π is a frequent arena for memory prodigies. Calculating more and more digits of π is also a constant pursuit of nerdy mathematicians who also program computers.

π is useful in matters of cybersecurity, as well as turning up in nature and many patterns of life, so it’s easy to answer the questions all math teachers and tutors are accustomed to answering regularly: “When am I ever going to use this?” and “Why should I care?” and “What relevance does this have to my life?”

π is also quite beautiful. Here is one of my favorite pieces of art, where some clever folks assigned a different shade to each digit, 0 to 9, and had a computer draw π.

As is proper for a math nerd’s home, I own many representations of pi:

(This is extra space to allow for the unlock-one-post-free-option that Substack let me add recently).

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