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10 Ways To Celebrate Pi Day
alphadogg writes "There are holidays, and then there are holidays for nerds, and March 14 (3.14) is one of those. Based on the mathematical constant number that represents the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle, Pi Day has grown to become somewhat of a day to celebrate for mathematicians and techies. Here are 10 things to do on the big day."
I'm on the east coast of the USA. This story was posted two minutes before it should have been.
Posted by samzenpus on 01:57 PM March 14th, 2012
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
That was an incredibly dumb, ad-laden slideshow. How much does Network World pay to get adclicks for these stupid stories? Seriously did they spend anything more than 5 minutes chunking that turd out?
Less ads on one page rather than 10.
Sensible to you maybe. The American way reads the way the date is normally spoken. We usually say "March 14th 2012", not "the 14th of March 2012. Sometimes other people do things differently. We also drive on the wrong side of the road! Get over it.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
First I taught my kids (age 5 and 6) about Pi with a circle drawing and a ruler and some string.
Then I taught them about the greek alphabet so they would understand what the "Pi" symbol came from
Then I taught them about homophones
Then I taught them about puns based on homophones
Then we made a pie, they learned about measuring and cooking.
Then we ate pie while they snickered about the fact that they don't have to do school work during spring break.
The American convention puts them in order of importance to a listener, and is WAY more logical than the typical European standard.
Month > Day > Hour > Minute (With the year, only as needed)
When someone asks you when an event takes place, the logical response is to give them the general time frame, and then refine it. For example, "When is your party?" is met by "The seventeenth, at 9 PM". It's understood that it's this month and this year. Another example, "When are you starting classes?" is met by "August 26th". Again, it's understood that it's this year, so you start with the most general time (month) and refine from there.
The year is rarely needed in speech, and when it is needed (such as in discussing history), it is usually on it's own. "When did Constantinople fall?" "1453".
In the European method, you give the day first, without giving the month. This is akin to giving the hour before the day... "When is your party?" "9 PM. On the seventeenth. Of June." It's totally backwards -- no actual information is conveyed to the listener until you finish the statement. The proverbial German phenomenon of the "verb-at-the-end" grammar, about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire language, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which the audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be baffled, are told, is a perfect analogue.
When I got home yesterday my daughter asked me "Will you help me make pumpkin pie if I go get the stuff for it?" I said "sure" because opportunities to hang out with my daughter are rare to be sure. So we're making pumpkin pie, well she is, I'm just there for moral support I guess.
I ask "So what is the pie for?"
She says "Tomorrow is pi day so I'm bringing pie to school"
I say "Oh, cool"
Inside I'm thinking "How the fuck did I get shit this right?"
signed,
stumbling into success