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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."

20 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Ladies and Gentlemen... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    your elected officials...HARD AT WORK!

    1. Re:Ladies and Gentlemen... by MrNaz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Troll? Perhaps the above comment could have done with a little more content, I don't see anything wrong with the implication that elected officials are wasting time and money on trivialities and showmanship.

      If they really were keen to improve to state of mathematics, there are some very good things that they could do to start fixing some of the problems with the education system.

      However, those things require action to be taken, and thus, responsibility for that action. It is easier for politicians to engage in this sort of political showmanship, because they look like they care about math, they get the political points for "doing something", and don't risk their actions working out not as well as planned (a risk everyone takes when they do anything) and exposing themselves to criticism from the opposition.

      Politics is the art of being gutless while beating your chest as loudly as possible.

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    2. Re:Ladies and Gentlemen... by penginkun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The more they occupy their time with frivolous stuff like this, the less time they have to plan their next rape of our rights and pocketbooks.

    3. Re:Ladies and Gentlemen... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Privatized education. Yes, because the privatized health care system has made everyone in the US able to access uniformly excellent services.

      Also, fuck you.

  2. It's a Saturday by crow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ahh, Congress. Finally get around to encouraging schools to use this for educational purposes on a year when it falls on a Saturday. Brilliant.

    1. Re:It's a Saturday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Don't you mean Ahh, Congress. Wasting taxpayers time on useless shit that the government doesn't need to do.?

      Seriously, I'm as much of a geek as anybody, but why does the government have to waste time on stuff like this, resolutions about the national anthem, pledge of allegiance, lauding Child's Play, and so on? Shouldn't they be spending their time on things that actually matter?

      You want kids to do better in school? Quit it with the gimmicks like this and spend time actually fixing the educational system.

    2. Re:It's a Saturday by RJFerret · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And apparently they can't do math, wouldn't July 22nd have made more sense: 22/7? (Not that school would be in regular session then either I know....)

      I'm not sure what 0.2142857 or 4.666667 has to do with Pi?

  3. Day of the week by radarsat1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It urges schools to take the opportunity to teach their students about Pi and "engage them about the study of mathematics."

    On a saturday!?

    Someone didn't think this through...

    Anyways, I hereby reappropriate this holiday as National Pie Day. I'm having strawberry-rubarb.

  4. Pi = 22/7 [Re:From across the pond] by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Unfortunately, we will never get a Pi day over here, as 3/14 doesn't exist. A sad day for the European lovers of Pi (a secret fraternity of which we do not speak)

    No problem. Define Pi day to be 22/7.

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  5. Re:From across the pond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We're planning a big party on 31 April 2015 (31/4/15), starts 9:26.

  6. A modest proposal by azaris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about teaching children about all the ways mathematics is useful in the sciences, engineering, public policy making, risk analysis, investments etc. rather than advocating pointless numerology that makes "mathematicians" look more like deranged Pythagoreans who worship numbers?

    1. Re:A modest proposal by FlyingBishop · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes! God forbid anyone worry about the ratio of the circumference of a circle to it's diameter. That would never have any practical application. I mean, it's only the basis for every calculation involving angles or anything. No one ever uses anything other than rectangles and simple right triangles in engineering.

  7. Re:From across the pond by DerPflanz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Euhm, there are more languages in the world than English, many of them also use dates; I say "veertien maart tweeduizend negen". Which makes 14/03/2009. Besides, this way, the smallest (day) comes first, then the bigger (month), then the biggest (year). There is a reason that ISO dates are yyyy-mm-dd (big-to-small), so they sort correctly.

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  8. Re:From across the pond by Vadim+Makarov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slash-separated date formats are ambiguous, varying between countries. If you want to avoid confusion, use the ISO date format: YYYY-MM-DD. E.g., 2009-03-14.

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  9. Mod Parent Up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's probably a personal problem, but the representation of dates has always confused me. Once I found out about the ISO format, I was like "That's it!" Now I only ever use ISO, because it's as close to self-explanatory as you can get - everybody knows it's not their native cultural format because it starts with the year, and if follows logically with the next smaller time measurement in each position. I'd like to see us forget all date formats but ISO.

  10. Re:From across the pond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whoever moderated this "insightful": you know April only has 30 days, don't you?

  11. Re:From across the pond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I always do dates like '14 Mar 2009.' While not in a logical sorting order, it at least immediately eliminates the confusion of what's the month and what's the day.

  12. Re:From across the pond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    considering that 22/7 is closer to pi than 3.14, I think it's definitely rather more than less.

  13. Re:But March 14th is already taken! by Hatta · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The counterpart holiday to Steak and BJ day is Valentines day. They don't need *another* holiday.

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  14. Re:But March 14th is already taken! by megaditto · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Read your post again after you've been married over a year.

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