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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."

10 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.

      --
      I hate printers.
    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.

  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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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?

  5. 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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    -- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
  6. 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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    17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
  7. 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?

  8. 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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    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.