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Warning, the below was intended for the sight only of nerds, all others may be blinded, bored, and die of sudden death from an unkown cause.

I mean Pi. Yes, Pi. Yesterday was 3/14, or 3.14 which also is of course the magic number for Pi to two decimals. So let's take a quick look at

What is Pi?
Quite simply it is the relationship between the inside diameter/radius and the circumference of the circle. Quite simply, the direct relationship between the diameter and the circumference is proportional in a monotonic relationship that provides a greater rate of growth for circumference and area relative to the radius.

Along with the exponential/natural logarithim, no other number shows up so much and so uniquely and often within the world. We will never discover its end nor what pi really is, because it never ends.

The basic equations.
2*pi*r = circumference
pi*r^2 = area

It finds itself everywhere, however. These are merely the two we are all familiar with.

The history and application of Pi
Pi is a number that has been guessed at for thousands of years. The earliest we can track its history is back to the Egyptians and Babylonians that respectively guessed the numer to be 3(8/9)^2. This is a relatively close guess and is close enough to provide good building projections.

The number was essential in creating the pyramids, helping them build with accuracy.

Another approximation of Pi came from the Bible in 1 Kings, where they measure the diameter of the Brass Sea for the Temple that was 10 cubits long and "30 cubits around"-making Pi=3 (as you can see terribly off, but is an early approximation from a civilization that was not scientifically advanced).

Later on, the Greeks took better shots at it using regular polygons increasing the number of sides to increase the accuracy of the approximation. Through creating a regular polygon of rigorous amounts of sides and measuring them proportionate to the radius, they arrived at 3 1/7- 3 1/8.

A more sophisticated way was using certain arcs in relation to polar coordinates and "primitive" half angle theorems-back then they didn't have nearly the easy form that we have today and the method of trigonometry was undeveloped.

Another problem they faced is the non-existence of the decimal system. This was introduced first to Western mathematicians from the East, India and China. Until then, the accuracy was limited by the use of the fractional system.

One very interesting use of Pi was in Syracuse. Archimedes helped defend Syracuse (and island city) from the Romans through the use of pi in application, catapults that were accurate, grapples that would pick up entire roman ships by the nose and tip them upwards and dump the sailors, tunnel systems to pour hot oil on the outside walls.

Though it may seem simple, the calculation of anything that orbits, anything to do with gravity, circles or spheres, involves the same number, pi.Quietly, simply, Pi has helped build our civilization from the ground up.

Pi day

I concluse by suggesting that on 3/14/15, we have a humongous celebration for Pi seeing that Pi to the 4th decimal is 3.1415. Where on that day we where shirts with Pi to the 100th decimal, make Pi jokes, eat pie that is, of course, made in the shape of a circle. Granted, this is six years off.

FYI, there is a pie day, http://www.wikihow.com/Celebrate-Pi-Day for details.

My favorite idea of theirs is converting things that are circular into radians and thus relative to Pi, so you can say instead of 9 pm it is 3/2*Pi o'clock. Or, get married on 3/14 at 1:59:26 (Pi to the 7th digit) exactly.

I hope that for all you fellow math peoplez out there, this helped lighten the e-mood 🙂.