Happy Pi Day!

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In our ever-changing world, it’s nice to have something constant that we can point to, so I’m happy that March 14 is celebrated as National Pi Day.

Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, and it’s a constant. (It’s also an irrational number, but that’s another story.) It doesn’t matter how big or small the circle is, the ratio of circumference to diameter is constant. The actual number begins with 3.14, hence our celebration of pi on 3/14.

Here are a few interesting facts about pi that I gleaned from piday.org:

  • The notion that there was a constant ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter has been known for about 4000 years.
  • Pi is such a fascinating concept that it inspired a style of writing called Pilish, where the number of letters in each word match the corresponding digit of pi (e.g., “Buy a girl a watch” corresponds to the first five digits of pi: 3.1415.) Software engineer Michael Keith wrote an entire book, called Not a Wake in this language. (The ebook sells on Amazon for $3.14.)
  • The Greek symbol for Pi wasn’t always used to represent the mathematical concept. It was introduced by the Welsh mathematician William Jones, a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, in 1706.
  • In 2015, Rajveer Meena memorized and recited pi to 70,000 decimal places.
  • Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879.

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But there are other celebrations on March 14. Have you ever used the National Day Calendar? It’s a great source of information about everything we celebrate in this country (as well as good fodder for blog posts). Today is also the national day of:

Write Your Story Day (This one should motivate us all.)

Learn About Butterflies Day

Potato Chip Day

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It’s fun to look up birthdays, anniversaries, or other special occasions in the National Day Calendar. I just looked up my husband’s and my anniversary. Oh – it’s today! Time to make dinner reservations at a restaurant with really good pie.

So TKZers: Take a moment to look up your special days in the National Day Calendar and let us know what you find. Extra credit if you write a few words in Pilish.

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About Kay DiBianca

Kay DiBianca is a former software developer and IT manager who retired to a life of mystery. She’s the award-winning author of The Watch Series of cozy mysteries. Her latest novel is "Lacey's Star: A Lady Pilot-in-Command Novel." Connect with Kay on her website at https://kaydibianca.com.

31 thoughts on “Happy Pi Day!”

  1. Good morning, Kay, and Happy Anniversary.

    Hey, you’re revealing my secret source for Reader Friday topics. This coming Friday is Global Recycling Day, and 3/25 (last Friday of the month) is National Tolkien Reading Day. So study up for a possible pop quiz.

    I discovered how correct this calendar is: My birthday was last month on “National Do a Grouch a Favor Day.” My wife would vouch for the accuracy of that date.

    I’ll skip the Pilish writing. I haven’t had my coffee yet. I think I’ll eat some potato chips, too.

    Hav a grat e daay!

    • Good morning, Steve. Someone told me about the National Day Calendar a couple of years ago. I knew about pi day, but didn’t know a lot of the trivia that surrounds it.

      I hope somebody will give Pilish a try. I was tempted to buy the book for my husband as an anniversary gift. 🙂

      Have a great day.

  2. Happy Anniversary. The Hubster will be delighted to discover it’s also National Napping Day.

  3. Happy Anniversary, Kay and Frank!

    In honor of your anniversary, today has also been proclaimed “National Send a Writer Down a Rabbit Hole Day” b/c that’s what this post did to me!

    • Good morning, Debbie.

      Speaking of rabbit holes, I’m trying to figure out a way I can write a clue in Pilish to include in my next mystery novel. (I think I’m beginning to take this Pi day thing too seriously.)

      Have a great day and watch out for those rabbit holes.

  4. Looked up my birthday and one of the designations is “World Thinking Day.” I didn’t click to look up their specific definition, but I just thought it was interesting, as a person who has a tendency to overthink things (writing or otherwise) that this should pop up on my birth date. LOL!

    As to Pi, anything math related causes stress so I will not go there. But next time I’m out and about, I will get myself a piece of pie to celebrate.

    • Morning, BK.

      World Thinking Day sounds like the perfect birthday for you! If only we could make every day World Thinking Day.

      Enjoy the pie. (I’m already thinking about what I’m going to order for dessert tonight 🙂

    • Glad to be of help, Mike.

      My husband has always had a little trouble remembering significant days. (It’s true what they say about absent-minded professors.) But his background is in physics. When he learned about Pi day and Einstein’s birthday, he got better at it. Sometimes.:)

  6. Happy Anniversary, Kay! Pi Day has been co-opted by pizza slingers and bakeries if my email inbox is any indication, but your day stands tall! Congratulations!

    • Thanks, Joe. Marketers for pizza and bakeries must love this day.

      Maybe we should just order a pizza for dinner. That would kind of come full circle. 🙂

  7. Happy Pi Day, Kay! Fun post to start off the week. I haven’t had enough black tea today to right in Pilish. Today being Write Your Story day reminded me of Mother’s or Father’s Day when I was young. My sibs and I would ask, “when’s kids day,” and mom would answer, every day is kid’s day 🙂 Every day is Write Your Story day for we writers, but of course, still great to celebrate.

    My birthday just past doesn’t have any super cool days being celebrated, but our anniversary on February 19th (also my wife’s birthday–we were married on her 19th birthday) is National Chocolate Mint day, one of her favorite treats. We celebrated forty years of marriage last month. There was chocolate, but alas, no mint. (Though there was very large bouquet of flowers that showed up on our front door step 🙂

    Have a wonderful day! I’ll be refraining from Pi because I had plenty of chocolate cake this weekend.

    • Two thumbs up for you, Priscilla! Great job.

      Pilish is hard, and I’m amazed that Michael Keith wrote an entire book in it. The book is 108 pages! It doesn’t surprise me that Keith is a software engineer.

  9. Hi, Kay…fun, fun post. And happy anniversary.

    I looked up my birthday on the National Calendar. April 18, 1775 was the day of Paul Revere’s ride…sort of common knowledge, I guess. I was also born on Easter Sunday, so my parents always told me they found me out in the yard under the emerging tulips…ha!

    But, today I learned that April 18 is also National Velociraptor Awareness Day. 🙂

    Make of that what you will. Have a great day!

    • Good morning, Deb. You have a lot of important things associated with your birthday. Being born on Easter is very cool.

      I’m going to be hyper-aware on April 18 this year to keep the velociraptors out of the yard. Thanks for the warning. 🙂

      Have a great day.

  10. Hi Kay. In honor of your anniversary, I looked up the day my friend and I started dating, August 3 twenty-some-odd years ago and expected to find out it was National Procrastination Day since we’ve never made it to the altar. lol But as my mother used to say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 😉

    • Hi Patricia!

      I try to celebrate National Procrastination Day every year, but I keep putting it off. (Sorry. I can hear the collective groan from here.)

      Your mother sounds like a very wise woman!

      Have a great day

  11. Several years ago St. Louis media started celebrating our area code as a holiday, 314. So today is 314 day in St. Louis celebrated by eating local foods. Said foods should be served with local beer. How neat it is that Budweiser is made just south of the Arch.

    No word yet on 636 day, the western part of St. Louis County or 557 which will overlay 314.

    • Enjoy your 314 day, Alan. Sounds like there’s a lot to celebrate in St. Louis.

      I think they’re going to have a problem with 636 and 557 unless somebody comes up with a new calendar.

      Have a good one!

  12. I eat my breakfast every morning while reading my online GoComics cartoons. In the comments section of “Ten Cats” a nice lady called LaughingKitty lists that day’s National Days, and it brings lots of interesting discussions. Yesterday’s Coconut Torte Day showed that a whole lot of people really don’t like coconut. I do. So, yeah, I keep up with the National Days.

    As one of the resident nerds here, I have to mention a scene in original STAR TREK where Spock stopped a super computer from doing anything else by asking it to calculate Pi to the last digit. These days, a kid’s toy could do that and still play. The people of the Sixties had no clue what computers would be capable of, and I imagine fifty years from now, readers will get a good snicker or two at us.

    • Good morning, Marilynn. Glad to see we have a knowledgeable National Day person on board!

      Because pi is irrational, it is infinite. Therefore, Spock must have been using a computer with a single processor. Today a kid’s toy can churn away at calculating pi while multi-processing other tasks, but it will never finish the job of calculating pi to the last digit.

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