A few things happened today. Of course, that is true of every day, but today is wildly different from the others.
By now, we are all more than aware of the disturbing time change. If you haven’t noticed, I am thoroughly opposed. I have always thought it was a rotten idea.
There’s a time for everything. And this isn’t it. Better luck next time. Because. The times they are a changing. Enough of that. Next year, it will be same time, same place. And so it goes.
Today’s date is significant, though. Always, every year, Pi day. There are some incredibly dedicated fans of Pi out there. They hold celebrations on this day and hold contests to see who can recite the most digits of Pi correctly.
The best “date” in history for Pi occurred in 1592. It “was on this day at 6:53 a.m. when the largest correspondence between calendar dates and significant digits of pi occurred. That is, since the introduction of the Julian calendar. It went as far as this: (3.14159265358)
The theory of Pi has been around for a long time. The ancient Babylonians calculated the area of a circle by taking three times the square of its radius. That gave Pi a value of pi = 3. One Babylonian tablet (ca. 1900–1680 BC) presented a number of 3.125 for π. And that, as we can see, is a little closer.
But the rock star of the Pi World is none other than Archimedes. Yes, that very first calculation came from Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 BC).
Archimedes approximated the area of a circle by using the Pythagorean Theorem. I won’t go into all the mathematical details and how he used two regular polygons to work the magic of finding the area of the circle. Blah, blah, blah, blah. But, in the end, Archimedes showed that Pi is between 3 1/7 and 3 10/71.
Not much is know about Archimedes. That was eons ago, as he was born in 287 BC. We know he spent a lot of his life at the proverbial chalkboard, working out math problems. Maybe that’s why I didn’t care for math so much. It was just one problem after another.
Anyway, Archimedes died c. 212 BC during the Second Punic War. The Roman forces captured the city of Syracuse after a two-year-long siege. That’s one heck of a fight. And the story unfolds with Archimedes, deep in thought, working on a mathematical diagram, when the city was captured.
A Roman soldier burst through the door and commanded him to go and meet General Marcellus. But old Archimedes said he wasn’t having any of it. He had to finish working on the problem. Well, you know how Roman soldiers can be. The guy was enraged. So he killed Archimedes, right on the spot, striking him down with his sword. I always said, “Math will kill ya’.”
They say the last words Archimedes spoke are “Do not disturb my circles,” a reference to the circles in the mathematical drawing that he was supposedly studying when disturbed by the Roman soldier. He should have offered the guy some Pi, instead.
The other nifty thing about this day, is that it is Albert Einstein’s birthday, coming here in 1879. We know how Einstein excelled at math and physics from a young age. As a 12-year-old, Einstein taught himself algebra and Euclidean geometry in one little summer. He discovered his own original proof of the Pythagorean theorem at age 12. Archimedes died in 212. I can see the interstellar connection from here.
So, a great day for math, this is. Everything adds up that way.
And always remember.
Don’t get Pi talking. It can go on forever.
If you see a math person with graph paper, avoid them at all costs.
They are probably plotting something.
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As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
— Albert Einstein
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Somehow it’s okay for people to chuckle about not being good at math. Yet, if I said “I never learned to read,” they’d say I was an illiterate dolt.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist and author
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Mathematics may not teach us to add love or subtract hate, but it gives us hope that every problem has a solution.
— Anonymous
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The Pi in the sky, and everywhere else.
