Pi, pie, and the making of a mathematical star

Pi Day, the web turns 35, and knowing when to work less

March 14, at least in countries that write dates in the “month/day/year” format, is Pi Day (in other countries, Pi Approximation Day is celebrated on the 22nd of July — the first person to reply to this email with the correct answer why wins a prize).

Pi Day is worth thinking about, and not just because it’s a cute quirk of the calendar. Pi, aka π, is a transcendental, irrational number that shows up in a surprising number of places. Beyond just being the Greek letter that symbolizes the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, pi is central to math, engineering, and the life sciences. It’s been calculated out to 50 trillion decimal places (how many of those do we regularly need?) and has a fascinating and central history in the development of mathematics. It’s our most-studied number, one with a depth and nuance that are constantly worth exploring (pi and Monte-Carlo simulations, anyone?). Pi’s a conundrum: A concept nearly everyone is familiar with, yet even experts don’t know everything about.

It’s also, as numbers go, something of a pop star. Pi Day began as a bit of a joke at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1998, but has since ballooned into the year’s premier math-related holiday. What other ratio has its own day officially recognized by the House of Representatives? Or has people trying to set world records by trying to memorize as much of it as possible (current record: 70,000 places)? It’s allegedly the best day of the year at MIT; it shares Albert Einstein’s birthday (though he never would have made a pi day joke); it’s also really the perfect day to meditate on your relationship with pie. It’s also not a terrible day for memes:

— Scott @ Medium

What else we’re reading

• Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, marked the 35th anniversary of its creation (March 12, 1989) with a letter about the big challenges web technology faces as it moves towards its fourth decade of existence. He sees monopoly power and the exploitation of our personal data as the major issues currently keeping the web from reaching its potential. “The future hinges on our ability to both reform the current system and create a new one that genuinely serves the best interests of humanity.”
• Next time you’re feeling down, take this phrase out for a spin: “I’ve got the morbs.” It’s an expression that goes viral every so often but despite feeling more “more like a modern coinage from a steampunk novel, or a clever Tumblr parody,” comes to us straight from the soot-stained streets of Victorian England.

Your daily dose of practical wisdom about knowing when to say when

A hard truth: There is no direct relationship between how hard you work on something and how good it will be.

Written by Scott Lamb
Edited and produced by Harris Sockel, Jon Gluck & Carly Rose Gillis

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