# Pi Day, 2010

If you were with us last year, then you know that nerds, geeks, math folk, and pi(e) lovers everywhere celebrate March 14th as $\pi$ day.  Last year we talked about some fun facts about the number $\pi$.  This year, we’re going to talk about a few of the $\pi$ day related things going on out there.

• At ScienceBlogs they’re having a $\pi$ day Pie Bakeoff!  You can submit your Aunt Matilda’s famous pie recipe and win fame and riches.  But be warned, the competition is stiff.  Last year’s winner was:

Spicy Pi Bacon Squared

• If you’re feeling fashionable, you could get some cherry $\pi$ day earrings:
• Or maybe a $\pi$ day T-shirt:
• Or perhaps read a Nobel Laurate’s poem about $\pi$:
• Pi

three point one four one.
All the following digits are also initial,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can’t be comprehended six five three five at a glance,
eight nine by calculation,
seven nine or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything else
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit
longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn’t stop at the page’s edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird’s nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh how brief – a mouse tail, a pigtail – is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star’s ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteen
my phone number your shirt size the year
nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floor
the number of inhabitants sixty-five cents
hip measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm,
as well as heaven and earth shall pass away,
but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing,
it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final seven,
nudging, always nudging a sluggish eternity
to continue.

Wislawa Szymborska (Polish Nobel Laureate: 1996)

• Or, if you thought Lucy Kaplansky was the only person who sings a $\pi$ song: