Happy Pi Day!

Today, March 14, can also be written as 3.14, which just so happens to be the start of Pi! Hence the new “holiday”. 🙂

Speaking of Pi, check out this cool mnemonic by Alexander “Sasha” Volokh:

“How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the tough lectures involving quantum mechanics; but we did estimate some digits by making very bad, not accurate, but so greatly efficient tools! In quaintly valuable ways, a dedicated student — I, Volokh, Alexander — can determine beautiful and curious stuff, O! Smart, gorgeous me! Descartes himself knew wonderful ways that could ascertain it too! Revered, glorious — a wicked dude! Behold an unending number: pi! Thinkers’ ceaseless agonizing produces little, if anything! For this constant, it stops not — just as e, I suppose. Vainly, ancient geometers computed it — a task undoable. Legendre, Adrien Marie: ‘I say pi rational is not!’ Adrien proved this theorem. Therefore, all doubters have made errors. (Everybody that’s Greek.) Today, counting is as bad a problem as years ago, maybe centuries even. Moreover, I do consider that variable x, y, z, wouldn’t much avail. Is constant like i? No, buffoon!”

By counting the number of letters in each word, and considering the end of each sentence to represent a zero, one can easily reconstruct the value of pi to 167 digits after the decimal point:

3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679 8214808651 3282306647 0938446095 5058223172 5359408128 4811174502 8410270.

However many digits after the decimal you want to remember it, have a great pi day!

(Thanks to Eric Andersen @eric_andersen for this!)