Next Friday, March 14th is Pi day. In the cafeteria during C and D lunches, the West Po Wire will be hosting a Pi day competition. Whoever can say the most digits of pi will win a prize.
The idea of Pi originates from early civilizations, specifically Babylon. About 4000 years ago, ancient Babylonians used a value of 3 as Pi when calculating the area of a circle. In ancient Egypt, Egyptians used a formula to find a circle’s area that equated pi to about 3.1605. The first direct calculation of the value of Pi was done by one of the greatest mathematicians in history, Archimedes of Syracuse, over 2000 years ago. Using the Pythagorean theorem, he was able to determine a range of numbers that Pi fell between. Archimedes found that pi falls between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71.
Independently of this, Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi used a similar method, although not much is known of his process because the book of his works has been lost to history. He found the value of pi to be equal to 355/113.
The actual symbol for Pi, π wasn’t adopted until the early 18th century when it was introduced by William Jones. The exact value of Pi was discovered by a French mathematician, George Buffon, using probability.
As for the holiday itself, Pi day was first celebrated in a San Francisco science museum. Years later, in 2009, the US House of Representatives passed legislation formally recognizing Pi day as a holiday.
