Happy Pi Day! Yes, it’s that time of year again when the month and day (in the American form of date representation) for those legendary 3 digits 3/14, also known as the beginning of the mathematical term Pi1. Being The Count, however, I’m certainly not satisfied with just one Pi Day each year, or just matching 3 digits of Pi for my festivities. No, I must venture forth to find other Math-related dates to share the joy that is the geeky holiday.
Now, Pi Day comes every year but only in America, as the European version of date display comes Day then Month. Unfortunately, this leaves Europe with no way to put forth 3.14 (note, they use a period (.) instead of a slash (/)), as alas, there are only 12 months. For the most part, Europe seems to be out of luck. After searching several dozen math constants2, and I can’t find any that start with a number from 1-30, and have 2 digits after the decimal that form a number less than 13. Viswanath’s Constant3 comes closest, but it looks like we’ll just have to exclude Europeans from our celbratory antics… No pie for you!
Not so fast! Let’s try not to leave them out of all the fun. I present below some alternatives to Pi day, some of which can even be translated to Day before Month!
| Date | Reason | Name | Celebration | 3/14/15 | Pi | Super Pi Day | Eat nothing but pie all day. Luckily, there are many, many varieties4 | 11/23/58 | Fibonacci Sequence | Fibonacci Day | Every hour, give a gift that costs as much as the last two gifts, starting with 2 $1 gifts. (20 points to whomever figures how much the last gift costs) | 1/6/18 | Phi | Golden Ratio Day | Do unto others only what you’d want to do to you, 1.618 as much! | 2/7/18 | e | Euler’s Number Day | Do something that people used to believe was impossible.5 |
We’ll have to wait a bit for these extra-geeky days to arrive, but at least we have today! So, those of you who can celebrate Pi day, run out to your Marie Callander’s or Coco’s, or even the local Denny’s, grab a slice, and enjoy! Save some room for Super Pi Day in a few years though, ok?
The Count
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