Pi Day is celebrated every 14th of March because it is a math constant whose basic approximation is 3.14.
March = 3, day = 14
During our early years, we learned about pi from our geometry class. But π has a lot more to offer than that! One interesting thing about it is the fact that it is an approximation, which means you can’t get its exact value. Also, its digits go on forever without repeating. 3.14159265359… Check this webpage out. It has a million digits of pi.
Awesome.
Some History
Pi has been known since mid-18th century but even if we compute the x seconds from that era to today and calculated pi to the number of places of that x, we would still only be approximating its actual value. Archimedes was the one who first “approximated” pi. He calculated the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. In other words, if you divide the circumference of any circle by its diameter, you get pi. Easy as pi! Anyway, there is a more complicated explanation for this here.
Trillion Digits
As I have said, pi is a very interesting math value so people never stop calculating its decimal digits to the core using high-powered PCs for fun. I have read that Shigeru Kondo, a Japanese systems engineer and Alexander J. Yee, an American computer science student, have calculated the value of pi to five trillion digits and set the new world record for the most digits of pi calculated.
Could you imagine the specs of the systems that they used for that!!!
Shigeru Kondo’s computer had the following specifications:
Processor: | 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2690 @ 2.9 GHz – (16 physical cores, 32 hyperthreaded) |
Memory: | 128 GB DDR3 @ 1600 MHz – 8 x 16 GB – 8 channels) |
Motherboard: | Asus Z9PE-D8 |
Hard Drives: | Boot: 1 TB
Pi Output: 4 x 3 TB Computation: 24 x 3 TB Backup: 4 x 3 TB |
Operating System: | Windows Server 2012 x64 |
Software: | y-cruncher BBP v1.0.119. |
According to Shigeru Kondo, this was the memory he needed for those large computations:
- Roughly 22 TB* of disk was needed to perform the computation.
- Another 3.8 TB of disk was needed to store the compressed output of decimal and hexadecimal digits
Anyway, my point is… Pi is a very unique “irrational number” because its exact value is inherently unknowable and its decimal expansion doesn’t repeat thus making it my favorite math thing. If you don’t believe that I like pi, check this out. (Note: I don’t like Math, I just like pi.)
Celebrate with Style
I am very excited to celebrate Pi Day this coming March 14th. I told my officemates that I will be bringing in pizza (pie) and then they told me they’ll also bring some other pies like egg pie or buko pie.
WE ARE THAT WEIRD. (Or maybe I am the only one who’s weird and they’re all just riding along with my weirdness)