Monthly
Maths
Wise Maths
‘Do not worry about
your difficulties in
mathematics, I
assure you that mine
are greater.’
Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)
I s s u e
Innovators in
mathematics education
www.mei.org.uk
3
M a r c h
Just for fun
2 0 1 1
March 14 - Happy Pi Day!
What is the volume of a pizza
with radius z and depth a?
(and Albert Einstein’s birthday)
Larry Shaw created Pi Day in 1989. The holiday was celebrated at the San Francisco
Exploratorium, with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, then
consuming fruit pies. Read more here and here
If we use 3.14 as the value for π, this explains why March 14 is designated Pi Day in
America, as in the American month/date system it is written as 3/14. Pi Approximation
Day is held on July 22 (or 22/7 in day/month date format), since the fraction 22⁄7 is a
common approximation of π.
Read more
Sometimes the so-called Pi Minute is also commemorated.. This occurs twice on March
14 at 1:59 a.m., and 1:59 p.m. If π is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes
3.1415926, making the Pi Second occur on March 14 at 1:59:26 a.m./p.m. If a 24-hour
clock is used, the Pi Second occurs just once yearly, on March 14 at 01:59:26.
Pi music
If you want to hear what π sounds like, click here.
YouTube offers many other π videos!
Pancake maths
It’s Shrove Tuesday
on March 8. Maths
can help to ensure
that your pancakes
are stacked neatly.
Read more
Maths Club
Strategy
Games
Splitting Piles
Start with two piles
of, say, 7 and 15
matches. A move
consists of removing
one pile and splitting
the other pile into two
smaller piles. The
first player unable to
do this loses.
Pi crop circles
The most complex crop circle ever to be seen in Britain was
discovered in a barley field in Wiltshire. The formation,
measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image
representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi. Read more
Pi mnemonics
The most common mnemonic technique is to memorize a sentence in which the number
of letters in each word is equal to the corresponding digit of π, e.g.
Can I have a large container of coffee? Thank you
Short mnemonics, however, do not take us very far down π's infinite road. This gives the
value of π as 3.141592653
In some mnemonics the word ="point" represents the decimal point itself, e.g.
The point I said a blind Bulgarian in France would know
Some mnemonics, such as this poem which gives the "3." and the first 20 decimal digits,
use the separation of the poem's title and main body to represent the decimal point:
Pie
I wish I could determine pi
Eureka, cried the great inventor
Christmas pudding, Christmas pie
Is the problem's very centre
Wikipedia has some really interesting examples in several languages.
Why not ask your students to invent some Pi Mnemonics of their own?
The longest or most original will be included in the April newsletter.
Please email entries to [email protected]
Maths Item of the Month
From the MEI website