Since 1988, March 14 has been celebrated as "Pi Greco Day", a day dedicated to the most widely used mathematical constant in physics, statistics and astrophysics
March 14 is celebrated as "Pi Greco Day". A day of "celebration" dedicated to the most famous and used mathematical constant. Hearing the word "Pi Greek" will most likely remind you of the bad times you spent in high school studying trigonometry. Even those who do not know its meaning, at least once used it to make a comparison with a complicated activity to do.
For those who do not know Pi Greco is the ratio of the length of the circumference of a circle to that of its diameter. The peculiarity of this mathematical constant is that it does not have a precise value. For convenience it is rounded to the second decimal place (3.14) but in reality Pi Greek is formed by hundreds of decimal values. A mathematical constant that has a fundamental importance in many different disciplines: it is used to calculate the area of a circle (A = πr²), but also in many formulas used in physics and statistics.
To celebrate its importance, from March 14, 1988 was established Pi Greek Day. From a simple American holiday, it has become an event celebrated throughout the world, so much so that the Ministry of Education and Research has organized a sort of tournament that will pit hundreds of Italian schools against each other in a battle of calculations.
Why Pi Greek Day is celebrated on March 14
Pi Greek Day was created by physicist Larry Shaw at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco in 1988. In the United States, the date is written differently than in ours: first the month and then the day. March 14 in the United States is 3-14, or the first two digits of the Greek Pi. Taking a cue from this similarity, the physicist of the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco has decided to celebrate March 14 as the "Day of Pi Greek". From a simple holiday for "nerds", Pi Greek Day has taken on international importance, so much so that Google celebrates it with a Doodle every year.
How to celebrate Pi Greek Day
What do you do to celebrate Pi Greek? Simple, you bake cakes. The first edition, in fact, involved baking pies, since in English the word "pie" has an assonance with "Pi". Over the years, the preparation of cakes has become a real habit, so much so that competitions are organized and some recipes have become very famous. So much so that in the Doodle prepared by Google for "Pi Greek Day 2018" there is precisely a cake prepared by French pastry chef Dominique Ansel.