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Pi (3.14...) Day - March 14 |
Why is March 14 called ’pi day’? Because, in numerical format, the date of March 14, ’year’ is written as 3/14/’year’ or 3.14 to represent just the month (March, the third month) and the fourteenth day. So, the day would be represented as 3.14 which is a rough approximation of the value of the mathematical constant pi.
So, what, exactly, is pi?
The number pi, represented by the Greek symbol 
, is one of those mathematical numbers that seems somewhat mysterious to a lot of people. So, in an effort to remove some of the mystery, here are some basic facts about pi.
While there are several mathematical ways of calculating the value for pi, its basic definition is that pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the diameter of the circle. That is, pi is the numerical value you would obtain if you took the circumference of a circle and divided it by the diameter of the circle. Mathematically, we would say that 
where 
represents the circumference of the circle and 
represents the diameter of the circle.
This definition should come as no surprise, since most of us know that the circumference of a circle is calculated by multiplying the diameter of the circle times this number pi, or 
.
The numerical value of pi is 3.14159... where the ‘...’ means that the number of digits in the value continues indefinitely to the right of the decimal point. This characteristic means that pi is an irrational number where the term ‘irrational’ means that it is impossible to represent the numerical value as a ratio of two integers. Numerical values that can be represented as a ratio of two integers are called rational numbers. For example, the numerical value 1.25 is a rational number because it can be represented as the ratio of 5 and 4; that is, 
exactly. There are, however, no two integers that can be divided to give he exact value for pi and so it is called an irrational number.
It is possible to approximate the value of pi as the ratio of 22 to 7; that is, 
which is approximately equal to the value of pi, 3.14159...
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