This article is more than 1 year old

Pi(e) Day of the Century is upon us! Time to celebrate 3/14/15 in style, surely?

Charge your gravy boats come 9:26pm tonight

It's the 14th of March, which means only one thing to maths nerds in the good ol' US of A: Pi Day.

Americans, who insist on putting the month before the day (crazy, right?) when it comes to date arrangement, celebrate the mathematical constant that frames our science and maths – 3/14.

It also happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday.

Accordingly, there is no better day to eat pie. Today, though, is extra special, as noted by Stephen Wolfram – the man behind large machine brain Wolfram Alpha – because it is "Pi Day of the Century".

He bragged that his company "has delivered more π to the world than any other organisation in history."

Wolfram added that there is plenty of confusion between pi and pie, given that they are pronounced in the same way.

Siri’s voice-to-text system sends Wolfram|Alpha lots of “pie” every day that we have to specially interpret as “pi”. And then there’s the Raspberry Pi, that has the Wolfram Language included.

And for me there’s the additional confusion that my personal fileserver happens to have been named “pi” for many years.

To celebrate the extra special 3/14/15 Pi Day, Wolfram Alpha has come up with a cool way of giving everyone their own slice of π.

Wanna know how "pi lucky" you are? Well, do ya, punk? This website works out exactly where your birthday string first appears in pi. You can turn the results into a neat t-shirt and then, naturally enough, drip gooey pie filling down it if, that is, you insist on bringing the love of two very different pi(e)s together. Hell, why wouldn't you. ®

Top image credit: Wolfram Alpha

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like