What's Your Favorite Pi?

Pi Pie baked at Delft University of Technology
Public domain - Wikimedia Commons

Let's hear it for Pi, for today is March 14! 3/14, 3-14 or whatever format, it's still 3.14 day. Pi Day is celebrated everywhere in honor of this important mathematical constant. Even Congress has approved the designation of a day to recognize Pi. The website www.piday.org is replete with everything you'd like to know about Pi, including some very odd places that Pi can be seen. The Random Facts site has a list of 50 interesting facts about Pi, including this item, "In the Greek alphabet, π (piwas) is the sixteenth letter. In the English alphabet, p is also the sixteenth letter." Today is also, fittingly enough, Albert Einstein's birthday, though he didn't live to see Pi celebrated on its own day. He probably would have appreciated it better than most people.   And of course, the best way to celebrate this day is to... eat pie!

How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

 

This is a question that is periodically posed to library reference services. So, it came up today at our branch and I thought I'd post the answer here:  according to the Population Reference Bureau, as of 2011,  107,602,707,791 people have been born in the world. Their video above explains the process of arriving at this figure, which is, naturally, a guesstimate since no hard population data exists for most of the time humans have been around. But it's an interesting parlor game of sorts, starting with establishing when the first humans even appeared. There's even a name for the study of ancient population studies - paleodemography.

Math with a Beat

Jake Scott, high school teacher in Maryland

Jake Scott, a high school teacher in Maryland, has found a way to make learning math easier (and more fun) - he raps about it! The WP published an in-depth article about his work recently; a very positive account. He creates math videos under the moniker 2 Pi, though it's not his primary method of instruction. It's a unique tool he uses along with traditional classroom learning, and a very effective one, if only to keep interest in math alive. He has uploaded a number of well-produced math rap videos on YouTube, making math accessible to everyone. Now we can all be Triangle Experts. If we had teachers like him years ago, we might not have feared word problems so much!

222nd Birth Anniversary of August Ferdinand Möbius

August Ferdinand Möbius (1790–1868)

The Universal Recycling Symbol

 

The eponymous creator of the Möbius Strip was born November 17, 1790. It's curious that the concept of a one-sided surface was also independently discovered by fellow German, Johann Benedict Listing around the same time.  The idea of the Möbius, also called the twisted cylinder, has sparked unusual creations such as George Hart's Möbius bagel. You can also find various instructional videos on creating your own Möbius Strip on Youtube. An example of a commonly seen Möbius Strip is the universal recycling symbol, with the green arrows chasing each other. A very fitting symbol for using and reusing, unendingly!

 

 

Möbius Strip

The Dot and the Line

 

 

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

 

Another classic 60's short film produced by Chuck Jones based on a book written and illustrated by Norton Juster. The reckless Dot doesn't notice the stodgy Line, but eventually he figures out the way to her heart. It's a classic revenge of the nerds kind of story, by turns touching, enlightening, and rewarding.

Happened Yesterday

Pi Unrolled by John Reid

From the US Census:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  TUESDAY, AUG. 14, 2012 - United States Population Reaches Milestone Shortly after 2:29 p.m. EDT today, the U.S. population clock will reach a milestone that is very meaningful to mathematical statisticians: it will show there are 314,159,265 residents, or pi (3.14159265) times 100 million. Pi is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. “This is a once in many generations event...so go out and celebrate this American pi,” said Census Bureau Chief Demographer Howard Hogan.

Happy Birthday to the 314,159,265th person born yesterday - may you always have pi!