Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Pi Day Extraordinaire

Posted by samzenpus on from the pecan-apple-or-cherry? dept.

First time accepted submitter DrTJ writes Today is Pi day. This year is a bit more extraordinary as it is 3/14/15 (in American date format). To celebrate, USA Today has posted a number of videos of kids reciting Pi, one of them to 8,784 digits. The Washington Post highlights the story of a couple who decided to make it their special day. "Donahue, 33, a Legal Aid attorney, fell for Karmel’s geeky side as soon as they met. On a beach vacation with her friends in 2012, a psychic told her, 'You are about to meet your soulmate.' Three days later, she walked into Kostume Karaoke night at Solly’s Tavern along the U Street corridor and saw a man onstage croaking out the Backstreet Boys’s 'I Want It That Way.' By the end of the night, he would be serenading her with Cake’s 'The Distance' — the song the DJ will play when they cut the pie."

6 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Pi Day 2015: meet the man who invented Ï by auric_dude · · Score: 4, Informative

    Anglesey-born William Jones was the first person to use the Greek letter Ï for the ratio of a circleâ(TM)s circumference to its diameter. But who was this little-known figure? http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

  2. Another holiday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I find this one particular irrational.

    1. Re:Another holiday by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      I find this one particular irrational.

      Not just irrational, but transcendental as well. A rational reason to celebrate today is that it is Albert Einstein's birthday.

  3. ISO 8601 by Traxton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Today is 2015-03-14. Using any other time format is stupid and confusing. I really hate having to decode weird American standards.

    1. Re:ISO 8601 by vux984 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You "really hate" moving the year from the start to the finish?

      I know I do. For two reasons:

      Year at the front in YYYY-mm-dd format (with leading zeros on single digit months and days) lets you sort sort dates as text without having to do anything extra. That's more than a little bit convenient in a LOT of situations.

      The other issue with mm-dd-YYYY is that is indistinguishable from dd-mm-YYYY for a stupidly large number of dates; and both versions are in common use -in english speaking countries (US is mm/dd/yyyy; UK is dd/mm/yyyy so its a nightmare.) I've seen documents with both formats used interchangeably.

      If you see YYYY-nn-mm you KNOW its Year-month-day, because nobody anywhere ever uses YYYY-day-month.

  4. Re:Maybe for the English, but what about the world by BoxRec · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Nope, not even for the English, as with the rest of the World they use dd/mm/yy it's only US Americans that use mm/dd/yy