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March 14th Officially Becomes National Pi Day

Posted by Soulskill on from the pi-in-the-sky-legislation dept.

whitefox writes "The scoop from CNet is that 'The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a resolution introduced two days earlier that designates March 14, 2009 (3/14, get it?) as National Pi Day. It urges schools to take the opportunity to teach their students about Pi and "engage them about the study of mathematics."' The resolution is available online. I doubt it'll ever become a national holiday, but the Pi string in the article is pretty cool in a nerdy sort of way."

7 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. But March 14th is already taken! by richy+freeway · · Score: 5, Informative

    Steak and Blowjob day has already claimed March 14th.

    http://www.steakandbjday.com/

    1. Re:But March 14th is already taken! by DaFallus · · Score: 3, Informative

      Its also Einstein's birthday.

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  2. Re:From across the pond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    MM/DD makes more sense. How do you verbally say a date?

    I know just a few Europen languages, but here are some examples: "el 4 de julio", "4. juli" or "4th of July". We use either little endian (4th of July, 2009) or big endian (2009-07-04), but not middle endian (September 11th, 2001) like you do.

  3. Re:From across the pond by Volanin · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nice!
    I am totally in!
    Now we only have to manage the silly limitation that April only goes to 30!

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  4. Re:The world is bigger than the USA alone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    In ENGLISH, we say "fourteenth of March". In AMERICAN, they say "March fourteen".

  5. Re:From across the pond by xaxa · · Score: 3, Informative

    that would read 7/2, so it would have to be february 7th.

    In Europe (actually, most places outside the US) we write DD-MM-YYYY or similar (DD/MM/YYYY, DD.MM.YYYY etc). This seems more logical to me, as days are smaller than months, and months are smaller than years.
    In Japan, and in ISO date format, it's YYYY-MM-DD.

    2/7 is the 2nd of July (or July 2nd, in American).

  6. Re:It's a Saturday by wildsurf · · Score: 4, Informative

    The irony in all this is that Pi is Wrong!

    For a variety of reasons, the number 2pi (6.2832...) works out much better as a fundamental constant than Pi, and it simplifies many mathematical formulas. The linked article suggests that 2pi be labeled a 'turn'; so in that sense, 90 degrees is a quarter-turn; etc. Surprisingly insightful.

    So while the rest of you jump the gun, I'll be celebrating on June 28th. :)

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