Pi Day

Starter of The Day Transum Mathematics Topics

Topics: Starter | Circles | Memory | Multiple Intelligences | Rounding

Karen, Klynnjansen@gmail.com
I absolutely love many of your problems. I search for open-ended ones & your site usually provides a lot of them! Thanks!
One suggestion I have is to always have one matching a holiday. I really enjoy incorporating the holidays/current events. I see you have a great upcoming one for Valentine's Day. You provided a fun one on Halloween.
A few that I would like to see added:
a Mardi Gras week or at least one on Fat Tuesday
Super Bowl
100th Day (or related to the number 100, I realize this varies from school to school, but maybe a week's worth of questions geared toward this celebration)
St. Patrick's Day
Keep up the excellent problems for our students.
Greatly appreciated!
Veterans Day.
Transum,
You may have scrolled this far down the page and missed the buttons above that allow you to vary the amount of time pi is visible on the screen. This function adds urgency and excitement to the memorising part of the lesson. You choose the time that would work best for your class. Happy Pi Day!
Matthew Zhao, Craigslea State Primary School
Starting from last year, I have memorised pi to 100 digits. I purposely finished memorising 100 digits on March 12th. March 13th was for practice and March 14th was for presentation.
Will, Carshalton Boys
Afterwards, I showed the class the world record holders. They loved it. http://pi-world-ranking-list.com/lists/memo/.
Transum,
The first time a digit repeats six times in succession in pi is at the 762nd position where you can find six nines in a row. This is known as the Feynman Point.
Joke,
An opinion without 3.14159265359 is just an onion.
Transum,
The Welsh mathematician William Jones (1675–1749) introduced the symbol π in 1706, most likely after the Greek word for periphery, which starts with the letter π.
Transum,
Did you know that you can buy numbers but the most expensive is π.
Buying π in Jamaica costs £2.00
Buying π in Trinidad costs £2.40
Buying π in St Kitts costs £2.15
These are the π rates of the Caribbean!
Transum,
How heavy is pi? Where would you go to find its weight?

"Somewhere over the rainbow…. Weigh a pi".
Alex Kontorovich, Twitter
With Pi Day just around the corner, let’s remember what Pi is all about.

After washing your hands thoroughly, cut the crust off a pizza pie and lay it across four others. You’ll see that the crust spans a little more than 3 pies. That’s Pi ˜ 3.14.

But that’s not all! (Cont’d) pic.twitter.com/xTVbObrPzH
— Alex Kontorovich (@AlexKontorovich) March 6, 2020
Paul A. Kirschner, Twitter
OK - One more smile: Coffie and Pi for math nerds pic.twitter.com/UfvQjdjhu5
— Paul A. Kirschner (@P_A_Kirschner) February 6, 2022
Yuki, Twitter
happy pi day everyonepic.twitter.com/5CClCZDShq
— yuki (@shotawatanabes) March 13, 2022
Happy Birthday Einstein,
Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day in 1879. Einstein excelled at Maths from a young age, reaching a mathematical level years ahead of his peers. The 12-year-old Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry over a single summer. Einstein also independently discovered his own original proof of the Pythagoras' theorem while he was only 12. A family tutor says that after he had given the 12-year-old Einstein a geometry textbook, after a short time Albert had worked through the whole book. As a 14-year-old he says he had "mastered integral and differential calculus"!
Halloween,
Q: What do you get if you divide the circumference of a jack-o-lantern by its diameter?
A: Pumpkin Pi.
Matelot,
3.14% of Sailors are PI rates!
Pastoralist,
Q. What do you need to calculate the distance around a circle of sheep?
A. Shepherd's Pi.
Dr Ben Blum-Smith, Tweet
The numbers corresponding to the letters in "Pi Day" are the first five perfect squares.
John, Bangkok
Happy Pi Day everyone. It’s the one day each year when you’re allowed to act irrationally. However some more rational people say that 22/7 is a better approximation to pi than 3.14 so we should celebrate on the 22nd July!
Kyle D Evans, A Year In Numbers
Apparently the practice of writing a poem or even a story that contains the digits of pi is called piphilology. Piphilological poems and stories of various length have been written, including the 10,000-word novel Not a Wake by Michael Keith, which shows a borderline abnormal dedication to the art.
Kyle D Evans, A Year In Numbers
I have recited pi to 100 places, but I’ve never been invited back to any of those places (sorry).

How did you use this starter? Can you suggest how teachers could present or develop this resource? Do you have any comments? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make this free resource even more useful for Maths teachers anywhere in the world.
Click here to enter your comments.

Previous Day | This starter is for 14 March | Next Day

Teacher, do your students have access to computers such as tablets, iPads or Laptops? This page was really designed for projection on a whiteboard but if you really want the students to have access to it here is a concise URL for a version of this page without the comments:

Transum.org/go/?Start=March14

However it would be better to assign one of the student interactive activities below.

Laptops In Lessons

Here is the URL which will take them to a related student activity.

Transum.org/go/?to=Circles

Circle attributes

How does the circumference of a glass compare to the height of the glass? You'll be surprised when you find out.

Parts of a circle

Pie In The Sky

Must-watch Pi videos

Unexpected places to find Pi

Matt Parker gets involved in some amazing mathematical events including this historic record attempt:

Three hundred and fourteen people were asked what first
springs to mind when dividing the circumference of a circle by its diameter.

Many More Interactive Circle Activities Online

TOP PI DAY ACTIVITIES

Host a Pi Day party:

Organise a celebration with your friends or classmates to honour Pi Day. You could bake Pi-themed cakes, make Pi decorations, and even have a Pi-themed quiz or game.

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Pi memory competition:

Use the idea at the top of this page in which students recite as many digits of Pi as they can. This is a fun and challenging way to test your memory and compete with friends. I, of course, would like to recommend PiMon

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Estimate Pi with a simulation

Imagine dropping needles on a grid of parallel lines, where the distance between each line is greater than the length of a needle. Then, calculate the probability of the needles crossing one of the lines. Believe it or not, this probability is directly connected to the value of pi! [Research Buffon's Needle for more information]

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Create Pi art:

Use the number Pi to create art, such as a Pi collage or a Pi-themed painting. You could even use the digits of Pi to create a digital art piece.

$\pi$

Make a Pi train:

Cut strips of paper, write the digits of Pi on each strip, and link them together as if they were train trucks to create a Pi train. The longer the train, the better!

$\pi$

Bake a Pi-themed pie:

Celebrate Pi Day by baking a delicious (but healthy) pie with a mathematical theme. You could make a pie with a Pi symbol on top, or create a pie that incorporates the number Pi into the recipe.

$\pi$

Create a Pi Day video:

Make a short video about Pi Day, explaining what it is and why it's important. You could include fun facts about Pi (see ideas above), demonstrations of how to calculate Pi, or interviews with people about what they think of Pi.

$\pi$

Pi-themed scavenger hunt:

Set up a scavenger hunt with clues that lead to different locations around your school or community, with each clue containing a mathematical puzzle or challenge related to Pi.

$\pi$

Pi Day trivia game:

Organize a Pi Day trivia game where students compete to answer questions about Pi, mathematics, and science. You could even offer prizes to the winners.

$\pi$

Pi Day dress-up day:

Encourage everyone to come to school dressed in Pi-themed attire, such as clothes with the Pi symbol or Pi-themed hats. (I did dress up as Piscine, the character from 'Life of Pi', as a tongue-in-cheek maths reference for World Book Day many years ago but I'm sure you could do better than that!)

$\pi$

Pi Day charity fundraiser:

Use Pi Day as an opportunity to raise money for a charity or cause that you care about. You could sell Pi-themed merchandise, host a bake sale, or organise a fun run or walk (3.14km) to raise funds for your chosen cause. The target for your fundraising could be £31.42, or £314.16 ($31.42, or $314.16)

COMPUTER ALGORITHM

Have you ever written any computer code? Here's an example of a JavaScript function that uses the Leibniz formula to estimate the value of pi:


function estimatePi(iterations) {
  let pi = 0;
  let sign = 1;
  let denominator = 1;

  for (let i = 0; i < iterations; i++) {
    pi += sign * 4 / denominator;
    sign *= -1;
    denominator += 2;
  }

  return pi;
}

This function takes a single parameter called 'iterations', which specifies how many iterations of the series expansion to perform. The more iterations you use, the more accurate the estimate will be.

Note that this implementation uses the Leibniz formula, which converges relatively slowly. There are other series expansions that converge more quickly, but they can be more complex to implement.

Try it (note that the larger number of iterations will require a lot of your computer's processing power and may slow down normal operations!):

Pie In The Sky

Must-watch Pi videos

Cartoon Maths

Pi and Four Fingers

Watch and Learn

Facts About Pi

Great Video

A Brief History of Pi

Unexpected places to find Pi

Euler's identity

\( e^{i \pi}+1 = 0 \)

Leibniz Formula

\( \frac{4}{1} - \frac{4}{3} + \frac{4}{5} - \frac{4}{7} \ldots = \pi\)

Normal Distribution

\( \frac{1}{ \sqrt{2 \pi}}e^{- \frac12 x^2} \)

Buffon's Needle

\( \frac{2L \times n}{th} = \pi \)

Sum of Reciprocals of Squares

\( \displaystyle \sum_{n = 1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}{6} \)

Integration

\( \displaystyle\int_{-\infty}^\infty e^{-x^2}dx=\sqrt\pi \)

Factorial

\( ( \frac12 )! = \frac{\sqrt{\pi}}{2} \)

Pi Memory Game on Google

Many More Interactive Circle Activities Online

TOP PI DAY ACTIVITIES

Host a Pi Day party:

Pi memory competition:

Estimate Pi with a simulation

Create Pi art:

Make a Pi train:

Bake a Pi-themed pie:

Create a Pi Day video:

Pi-themed scavenger hunt:

Pi Day trivia game:

Pi Day dress-up day:

Pi Day charity fundraiser:

COMPUTER ALGORITHM