March 14, 2014

Happy Pi Day!

Today is March 14 (Einstein's birthday, coincidentally) and so today has been designated as "Pi day" by the egg-head, slide-rule crowd.

Why is March 14 (or 3/14) Pi day?  Because Pi (pronounced "pie") is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.  And in our number system it's written out as:
3. 14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...
It's an irrational number, meaning that it can't be written out as a simple fraction (i.e. as a "ratio" of two integers a/b where b doesn't equal zero) as well as a transcendental number, meaning that it's not a root of a non-zero polynomial with rational coefficients.

And it goes on forever.

Happy Pi Day!

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