Slashdot Mirror
Memorial Set For 'Pi Day' Creator (sfgate.com)
"Three-point-one-four was more than a number to museum curator Larry Shaw," writes the San Francisco Chronicle. Long-time Slashdot reader linuxwrangler writes: In 1988 at a retreat for San Francisco Exploratorium staff, Larry Shaw proposed linking the digits of pi, which begins 3.14, with the date March 14. Initially the "holiday" was only celebrated by museum staff but it didn't take long for the idea to spread and Pi Day was born.
For 38 years, Mr. Shaw donned a red cap emblazoned with the magic digits and led a parade of museum goers, each of them holding a sign bearing one of the digits of pi. Shaw died August 19 at age 78 and a memorial is planned for Sunday September 24.
The memorial will be held in Mill Valley, California, the Chronicle reports, adding that "pie will be served."
For 38 years, Mr. Shaw donned a red cap emblazoned with the magic digits and led a parade of museum goers, each of them holding a sign bearing one of the digits of pi. Shaw died August 19 at age 78 and a memorial is planned for Sunday September 24.
The memorial will be held in Mill Valley, California, the Chronicle reports, adding that "pie will be served."
There's also the fact that "3.14" equals nothing as a date, because most of the planet does not use the MM-DD-YYYY format.
DD-MM-YYYY or YYYY-MM-DD make sense. MM-DD might make sense as a shortened version of YYYY-MM-DD. For filing documents I use YYYY-MM-DD as sorting lexically makes more sense.
Next step is to memorialize whoever thought of creating Pi Day Creator Day
That's why I'm waiting until May 9th of the year 3141 before celebrating.
Obligatory slashdot xkcd post. I'm sure Larry had it on his wall.
https://xkcd.com/10/
Don't worry, for all us un-americans there is a more accurate Pi day on 22/7 since 22/7 is a slightly better approximation to pi than 3.14.
YYYY-MM-DD is the only thing that makes any sense to me. Sorting alphanumerically also means sorting chronologically, and by time of day if you include the THH:MM:SSZ part.