Pi Day
by Stormy on March 14, 2010
Did you know there’s an actual day to celebrate pies? We just found out and did what marmots do best!
It turns out that March 14 is Pi Day. Pi – π– is the Greek letter representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. This is an important constant in mathematics as it happens to be valuable in many formulas. Mathematicians call π an irrational transcendental continued constant, which actually means very little to a marmot.
We tried to find a marmot application to π and the best we came up with was that if a marmot is moving down a tight burrow passage and brushing the walls with both hips, then it will take ½ × π × π marmots of similar size to clog the place up.
In 2009 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution (#224) that March 14 should be recognized as National Pi Day. In response to the requests of our nation’s leadership, we are actively celebrating this holiday, even though we don’t fully understand it.
We were told that π is approximated as 3.14, which is why March 14 is considered the day to celebrate it. An approximation for π is the fraction 22/7, which makes July 22 the Pi Approximation Day and we set it as a deadline to figure out how to handle this holiday. The actual value for π is said to be 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510… We’re just simple marmots. To us that’s an irrational transcendental continued constant (oh, hey, we get it!)
It turns out that National Apple Pie Day is May 13, National Cherry Pie Day is February 20 and National Pumpkin Pie Day is December 25. We will be working on a comprehensive plan to get all the pies in on schedule. If you’re aware of any other pie days, please let us know!
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