a blueberry pi pie
Despite the lingering snow, March is here and Pi Day is only a week away! I love Pi Day because it combines three of my favorite things: math, puns, and dessert. Baking a pie is always a fun (and tasty!) way to celebrate—if you’re looking for a recipe, Buzzfeed has some really creative options, collected specifically for the holiday. It’s not specifically pi-related, but I also really enjoyed Vi Hart’s video about mathematical baking. She and her friends use shortbread cookies to build everything from tessellations to Sierpiński tetrahedra.
Another fun thing to check out is Numberphile’s collection of pi visualizations. You probably know pi to at least five digits, or possibly more, but the video showcases a variety of diagrams that allow conceptualization of much longer digit strings. From color-coded dots to spirals to web-like rainbow graphs, these diagrams are both elegant and educational. They also allow for interesting visual comparisons between pi and random digit strings, or pi and other irrational numbers such as the constants e and φ.
If you have any favorite Pi Day activities, feel free to share them in the comments!
