The TRUTH About Pi Day

We’ve been duped! Hoodwinked! Taken advantage of by the mathematically semi-literate. Most of us don’t even realize it and ignorantly celebrate a uniquely geeky day of note under false pretenses. But I’m here to shout it to the world: Pi DAY IS A SHAM!! It is not *really* Pi day today; it can never truly be Pi day. (All true math nerds will rejoice at the verity of my statement; for exactness is at the heart of good mathematics) We can only hope to celebrate an approximation of Pi day, and today’s observance is only the crudest of such approximations. If we’re going to do justice to the noblest of numbers* then we must know exactly what it is we’re acknowledging and celebrate with eyes wide open.
*(Sorry e, you are just as valuable as Pi and maybe even more useful – no one ever takes the log base Pi of a number – but Pi gets all the glory. In fact, most people don’t even know you’re a number; “Isn’t e a letter?” they say in their ignorance).

Pi is, of course, an infinitely long, non-repeating irrational number. The best we can hope to do is calculate like mad and get as many digits as we can. Schoolchildren learn 3.14 as early as elementary school. Later in the course of their studies they are taught the somewhat more accurate 3.14159. Of course, there are the seriously Pi-learned (like my good friend Peggy Allen in 9th grade) who memorize hundreds of digits of this glorious number. (In the song “White and Nerdy” Weird Al Yankovic claims, “I know Pi to a thousand places…” but I’m betting that’s artistic license). Websites like “The Joy of Pi” (http://www.joyofpi.com/pi.html) will show you Pi calculated to millions of decimal places, but even those are only makeshift renditions of the infinite beauty of the original chaotic, quintessential real number that even those as ancient as Archimedes enjoyed.

This train of Pi-reverie lays bare the bald truth, shaved of pretense and mathematical illiteracy: there can never be a true Pi day! Anything that we acknowledge and commemorate is only the cruel reminder of a rudimentary approximation. In fact, what we celebrate today, March 14th or 3.14, is the minimally accepted, clumsiest of versions of Pi. Worse, if you include the year 2009, then you end up with 3.14.2009 which is not nearly Pi! It’s a travesty! Only by not including the year can it even be called the basest simulacra of a Pi day. Maybe, if you use the common two-digit year method of dating, we can have a more accurate Pi day on March 14th of 2015. As my 12 year old son noted when I told him my thinking, the most precise Pi day we could have using our method of calendaring occurred on March 14th, 1592, or 3.14.1592. But wait! Even that is inaccurate! The first 8 digits of Pi are 3.1415926 which would round to seven digits as 3.141593! If we apply the mathematically precise thinking that we’re trying to communicate, the most accurate Pi day possible occurred on March 14, 1593 (3.14.1593)! We missed the closest approximation to true Pi day by 416 years! Similarly, the next more accurate Pi day would have to occur in 2016 due to correct rounding rules (resulting in the technically correct “rounded Pi”). If you don’t obey the rounding rules, then you’re just ingloriously hacking off the end of this already sadly estimated great number.

I’m sure you’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking now: this is a great opportunity to establish a more rigorous celebration! But what to more precisely call this day? We can’t call it “Sham Pi” day – sounds too much like “Shampoo.” We can’t call it “Mock Pi” day because, well, I don’t like Ritz crackers all that much.

Hence, I propose the following naming and celebratory conventions:

March 14th of any year (3.14) – This is only accurate to the hundredths place, so we shall call this date “One Hundred Pi Day.”

March 14th, 2015 (3.14.15) – as this can only be considered a Pi day by barbarically hacking off the end of the number at the ten thousandths place, it will be called the “Ten Thousand Pi Slice Day”

March 14th, 1016 (3.14.16) – as this now follows the correct rounding rules to the ten thousandths place, this is, of course to be called “Ten Thousand Pi Day.”

Important near-Pi days of the past:

March 14th, 1000 (3.14.1000) – “One Thousand Pi Slice Day”
March 14th, 2000 (3.14.2000) – “One Thousand Pi Day”
March 14th, 1590 (3.14.1590) – “Hundred Thousand Pi Day”
March 14th, 1592 (3.14.1592) – “One Million Pi Slice Day,” or the more commonly accepted “Mega Slice Pi Day.”
March 14th, 1593 (3.14.1593) – Revered and respected as that most accurate of all approximate Pi days, “Million Pi Day,” a.k.a., “Mega Pi Day.”

So, spread the word and stamp out Pi lies! Establish celebratory rigor and commemoratory accuracy! Truncate numerical ignorance! Tell your friends and let’s call today what it really is: One Hundred Pi Day! May we all look forward to “Ten Thousand Pi Slice Day” and “Ten Thousand Pi Day” in six and seven more years, respectively. I leave you with the following witticism, courtesy of my Father, who I blame for my Pi-fascination: “Pi are not square, Pi are round! Cornbread are square!”

-- Reynold Byers, 3/14/2009