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Happy Pi Day
I just wanted take a break to wish everyone a Happy Pi Day. It's 3/14, so I hope you are all enjoying your day off, and remember not to bother checking your mailbox.
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Where's my pi cake?
And here's a festive image I created for the occasion
http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/5665/28362805.jpg
3/14 is the third day in the fourteenth month.
Oh, I see, they are using middle-endian notation.
I'd also like to wish everybody (and also remind them) a happy steak and BJ day. It's exactly one month after V-day which we all know is for the women. This holiday evens out the universe.
Its still 14/3 here
Only 4 more years until 3/14/15. That's the big one and I expect math departments the world over to go overboard on the candy and soda that day.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Shouldn't Pi day be the 22th of July?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Actually, I think you'll find that today is Steak and BJ Day
http://www.steakandbjday.com/
Summation 2
also albert einstein's birthday
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
March 14, 1879
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just because you people screwed up your calendar so you do not have Pi day, is not our fault. In the US, we like our pie... I mean Pi.
It is only Pi Day if you use the date format of mm/dd. In countries that use dd/mm date format, it lands on 22/7. If you think about it, Pi Day makes more sense in that format.
My subject line says "Only in America", but in reality Basque Country, Hungary, Korea, and Mongolia use mm.dd which makes the more ideal 3.14
In most states, there are no longer separate holidays for pi and e but rather a combined "Transcendentals Day".
"Come on down, our prices for this one day event are just irrational".
It's 14/3 here you insensitive clod!
In ISO 8601 notation, today is 2011-03-14, where the "3.14" is easy to spot. July 22 is 2011-07-22, where the "22/7" is backward.
Either way, it's not 3/14 anywhere. In fact it's never 3/14. There aren't 14 months in the year.
2011-03-14. Do you really not understand it?
I'm going to get my '3.14' on and bake myself something in a circular tin. Maybe pumpkin or apple! (it gives me a good excuse to, anyways)
We wait for it every year, yet it never comes. That's true love.
There is more than one way to skin a cat there chief.
According to ISO 8601, today is 2011-03-14.
I wouldn't hold my breath for 31st of April.
also albert einstein's birthday
March 14, 1879
And mine, except four score later. :)
-- Jeff Woods
It comes from saying "March 14, 2011" in formal writing and oral communication. 3/14/11 is an informal abbreviation of that, and is in that order because it comports with how the formal, unabbreviated version is written. In other words, the purpose for which dates were abbreviated results in the manner in which they were abbreviated. Computerized sorting by date was not a consideration when this date format came into standard use.
I don't know why we say "March 14, 2011" instead of "14 March, 2011", but as a native speaker of American English it does feel much more natural to say the former. There is probably a history behind that but it, too, had no reason to take into consideration computerized sorting.
Although Pi day is great and all, I prefer the "Steak and bj" aspect of 14/3 more.
Except that 'the world over doesnt use mm/dd/yy
in Commonwealth countries we use dd/mm/yy
in europe they use yyyy/mm/dd
Islamic countries use a completely different calendar
But its less than a week until Naw-Ruz (persian new year
At sunset on 20th March all 'The Friends' can stop fasting
Don't forget to 'wear the green' on the 17th for St Pats day
And it would be cute to 'wear purple' tomorrow (15th) to signify that
"the Ides of March have come'
'Aye Caesar, but not gone'
That's a terrible approximation of pi. 22/7 is much better.
Have a pair of "Tripel 9" beers and call it a Feynman Point special! http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/acatalog/BrewFerm_Triple_9_ltr_Beer_Kit.html
It's only pi day if you use the American notation...
So I guess that makes it American Pi day.
I too was once an ardent pi supporter. However, I have seen the light... let us eliminate spurious factors of two everywhere and embrace a more reasonable transcendental number: tau
No we just have it slightly later on the 31st of april
Jeees, so there are countries where April has 31 days. The world is really a crazy place. By the way, like that we lose the slash as a decimal separator. I still prefer to wait until they add two months to the calendar.
2011-03-14
FTFY
which is totally what she said
Waiting for 3/14/15 at 9:26 AM.
Just before it flips to 9:27 we'll have an ultimate Pi moment.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Over here is a rather dull 14/3/2011 FX: Google Google Google
Ah!! 143 = I love you Further proof there are No dull numbers
No we just have it slightly later on the 31st of april
Let me know how that works out for you.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
"ISO STANDARD DATE FORMAT" does not use slashes to separate the date parts.
Knobcake.
from @neiltyson: http://twitter.com/#!/neiltyson/status/47289370788638722
"Sixty-four decimal places of Pi gets the observable universe's circumference down to a sextillionth the size of a proton."
Pi day always reminds me of one of my favorite examples of legislative lunacy, the almost-successful attempt by the Indiana state legislature to set the value(s) of Pi by statute. The story, from Cecil Adams's "The Straight Dope" I particularly liked Prof. Waldo's response, when he was invited to meet the originator of this bill.
I'm not the AC, but it's a Diophantine approximation of pi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_that_22/7_exceeds_%CF%80
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
From her last album.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
By varying the notation.
3/14
31.4.
"Just because you people screwed up your calendar so you do not have Pi day, is not our fault."
Ah but we do, it's just not today, it's the 22nd of July
It will be a cold day in hell before I recognize Pi-Day:
http://halftauday.com/
Oh, please... shut your PI HOLE!
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
I think I've seen this comment four times on this page, but I still think it's more insightful that redundant.
Happy Rejected-from-MIT Day!
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Interestingly, it's very difficult to celebrate both holidays.
Being as I was allowed to escape my mothers womb on one such Pi day many years ago, I applaud those celebrating it. I will be eating Peanut Butter Pie this year in celebration!
Given your history of understanding wordplay and other jokes, you're probably trolling, but I'll explain anyway.
The first 3 digits of Pi is 3.14.
In western notation (or maybe just the US), March 14th is denoted as 3/14.
So March 14 (3/14) is Pi day (3.14). It has nothing to do with treating the date separator as division, and everything to do with simply matching up the numbers.
We should free ourselves of the tyranny of Pi, and celebrate Tau.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Efficiency.
"Hey Bob, what's today?"
"It's the 14th of March"
vs
"It's March 14th"
There are two fewer words to say :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Ah, so 3-14 is -11, yes?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Here day comes before month. It's 14/3 you insensitive clod!
Onda Technology Institute
I say it's twenty past three. Doesn't mean I write 20:3pm. It's not an explanation of why, it's just a statement of fact that you do.
You don't support your sorting argument very well, when you mention 22/7.
Taking a string and reversing it and then sorting it will not achieve your desired sort order (i.e. taking strings holding dates such as "22/7/2011" or "22/7"). "22/7/2011" in reverse is "1102/7/22". "30/12/2009" in reverse is "9002/21/03". So all the dates from 2009 will be after all the year 2011 dates. Years will be all confused. Ten's place of day-of-month is to the left of the one's place. There are so many issues with this, you can't be a competent programmer, if you'd suggest this.
Even if you meant that you reverse the order of the three major components like this for February 12, 2011 -> 12/2/2011 -> 2011/2/12, a string sort won't cut it. Because "2011/2/23" is greater than "2011/12/23". It was you who left the leading zero off your example.
And if you aren't using strings, but are using date types, then really you have nothing to complain about. Date type sorting works just fine for American formats.
This message is intentionally silly because your critique of all Americans is silly. Sorting is just fine. We have no issue with it.
We say "March 14th", which is abbreviated 3/14. Simple. Infinitely better than your suggestion.
Only the US and Canadia do MM/DD/YYYY these days. DD/MM/YYYY if you have to, but YYYY-MM-DD ftw.
Is that kinda like may 35th?
Since we write Day-Month-Year, I am personally looking forward to 31.4.15...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Family Guy - The Pi Song
Kate Bush - Pi (short version)
Michael Blake - What Pi Sounds Like
Blood, Sweat, and Tears - Spinning Wheel
Billy Preston - Will It Go Around In Circles
Beach Boys - I Get Around
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Not in the real world it's not.
Oh come on - in the real world we celebrate pi day on the 31st April ;-)
For random reasons, heh...
22/7 should be the Pi day!
i used to look up pron actresses on wikipedia all the time, then at some point a few years ago, they just stop showing up
that's the real reason wikipedia deletionists suck
hey arrogant wikipedia adequacy trolls: give me back my Lily Thai page
assholes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Only the US and Canadia do MM/DD/YYYY these days. DD/MM/YYYY if you have to, but YYYY-MM-DD ftw.
Sorry, but I'm in Kanuckistan, and haven't seen anyone use mmddyyyy for ... gee, not any time this century.
People avoid ambiguity by using mmm dd yyyy (Mar 14 2011) or dd mmm yyyy (14 Mar 2011).
If I have to use numbers only, I do use yyyy mm dd - it just makes sense.
My date format is DD/MM/YYYY, you insensitive clod !
Ah! I've never visited your fine country, I was going off the wikipedia article.
Damn you, wikipedia! They told me not to trust you, I should have listened! I should have listened *sob*
I think you mean 3/14/16. The next digit is a nine, so you round up.
And now the real tricky question... If you didn't round up or down, when would you celebrate pi day? 2/16/16? (0.9265 years after 3/14/15?)
Bow-ties are cool.
YYYY-MM-DD. More here.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
In most states, there are no longer separate holidays for pi and e but rather a combined "Transcendentals Day".
"Come on down, our prices for this one day event are just irrational".
You know the deals on Transcendentals Day can be really great - but in practice most people just get drawn into a seemingly endless process of haggling over smaller and smaller price increments...
Bow-ties are cool.
Actually, Canadian standard format is also YYYY-MM-DD. But a lot of people end up using it because there's so much interaction with the US.
How about "You Spin Me Round" by Dead or Alive?
"Turn Turn Turn" by the Byrds?
"Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash?
Or, since pi day is a day when we should be celebrating irrationality...
"Dare to be Stupid" by Weird Al Yankovic!
Bow-ties are cool.
Damn straight! Please wake up my cryogenically preserved head when it's 3141-05-09 02:06:53.590 GMT and then I'll be prepared to celebrate the arbitrary matching of a date to a mathematical quantity.
Come to think of it, I don't want to wait that long. Wake me up at 2718-02-08 18:28:45.905 GMT for "e" day.
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
Wouldn't PI day (in the US) really be 7/22 (July 22nd)?
See my blog at Who's Who
Great math video by Vi Hart, on why Pi is basically wrong.
Enjoy:
http://vihart.com/blog/pi-is-still-wrong/
Interestingly enough, my old dBase IV manual lists the following formats for the SET DATE command (notice the separators) - the ONLY place using month day year was the US:
AMERICAN (or MDY) mm/dd/y
ANSI yy.mm.dd
BRITISH or FRENCH (or DMY) dd/mm/yy
GERMAN dd.mm.yy
ITALIAN dd-mm-yy
JAPAN (or YMD) yy/mm/dd
USA mm-dd-yy
No wonder we had a y2k problem.
Vi Hart : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ
There's tau, pie, and pi in that video. In order of importance.
To celebrate Pi Day and Einstein's birthday, Princeton has a "Geek Freak Weekend", including a pi recitation competition. The winner could recite it out to 1371 digits.
3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128 4811174502 8410270193 8521105559 6446229489 5493038196 4428810975 6659334461 2847564823 3786783165 2712019091 4564856692 3460348610 4543266482 1339360726 0249141273 7245870066 0631558817 4881520920 9628292540 9171536436 7892590360 0113305305 4882046652 1384146951 9415116094 3305727036 5759591953 0921861173 8193261179 3105118548 0744623799 6274956735 1885752724 8912279381 8301194912 9833673362 4406566430 8602139494 6395224737 1907021798 6094370277 0539217176 2931767523 8467481846 7669405132 0005681271 4526356082 7785771342 7577896091 7363717872 1468440901 2249534301 4654958537 1050792279 6892589235 4201995611 2129021960 8640344181 5981362977 4771309960 5187072113 4999999837 2978049951 0597317328 1609631859 5024459455 3469083026 4252230825 3344685035 2619311881 7101000313 7838752886 5875332083 8142061717 7669147303 5982534904 2875546873 1159562863 8823537875 9375195778 1857780532 1712268066 1300192787 6611195909 2164201989
...and is also a perfect example of the quality of grammar taught at American schools.
No one's asking anyone outside the US to celebrate it
Yes they are. Didn't you read the Slashdot article title?
Happy fucking pi day my arse.
I propose that we move the annual flame war over date formats to the first week of January each year. It makes more sense coming right after New Year's Day. In addition to date format, we can devote a day to vi vs. emacs, windows vs. linux vs. apple os, etc. As for Pi Day, we will be celebrating in our office with apple, cherry, blackberry, and lemon pies.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I personally think we should start using YYYYY-MM-DD now.
This way the programmers have just under 8,000 years to get their coding right....
Somehow, it's always a European whining when the month comes first on an American website, and never an African, or an Asian, or an Australian, or a Central American, or a South American, or an Arab, or an Indian...
Actually I'm Australian, and I whine quite a lot about that you very much.
It is so annoying when co-workers use non ISO dates as filenames. You just can't sort that shit....
Even CNN is acknowledging this idea. Personally, I do think 2*pi is a more fundamental constant than pi, but I don't like the idea of devoting another letter of the Greek alphabet to it. Tau is used for too many other things (time constants, temperature in "natural units" (absolute temp * Boltzmann's constant), and several other things). Perhaps there should be a new symbol introduced for this quantity, and then we can eventually phase out pi, freeing up another letter of the alphabet for other purposes.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Yes I have seen that movie. I have seen what you guys do to pie....
And if they don't manage to get it right, not to despair, because there is a top-secret project that has a bunch of old school COBOL, Fortran and Assembly Language Programmers cyropreserved until the year 9998 so they can save the world. Again.
http://visualizecommonsense.com/
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I knew I should have put a humor tag on that. Yes, folks, I know April only has 30 days. Don't you find it appropriate to celebrate an irrational number on a nonexistent day?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
If people are stupid enough to assume that how it's displayed and how it's stored are the same then I'm surprised it wasn't considerably worse.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If I have to use numbers only, I do use yyyy mm dd - it just makes sense.
Agreed. Where I live dd/mm/yyyy is the norm, but it does cause confusion at times when communicating with people from other countries. I always use yyyy-mm-dd in my own notes, and occasionally this format slips into written messages to other people as well. I've gotten a couple of comments ("huh, that's a curious date notation") but never experienced a misunderstanding. It *does* just make sense.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I think we should agree to stop at 314 comments, as a mark of respect.
USA != America
"Only in America" was a quotation. It has been used many times in movies, musicals and song lyrics. I was inspired by a particular reading from a Latino actress, but I can't remember which movie it was from.
15 15 2011?
It's the 31st of April already?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Mainly different demographics.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.