Celebrate Pi Day!

Yep – you guessed it!  Today is 03-14 and Pi Day has an Official Website.

Pie, you say?

 No, not THAT kind of Pi!  THIS kind:

 Pi, a Greek letter, is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th. Pi = 3.1415926535…

There is a very interesting article on “Quilting Pi” by Ivars Peterson at: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/7304/title/Math_Trek__Quilting_Pi

To quote Peterson from his article,

“When John Sims contemplates a number, he sees color and shape. And an intriguing, enigmatic number such as pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, conjures up vivid patterns that belong on quilts.

Starting with 3.14159265, the decimal digits of pi run on forever, and there's no discernible pattern to ease the task of compiling (or memorizing) these digits. Computer scientists have so far succeeded in computing 1,241,100,000,000 decimal digits of pi.

Both a mathematician and an artist, Sims taught for many years at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla. He's passionately interested in the collision of mathematical

ideas and visual culture...”

Here is an example of a quilt designed by Sims using Pi as his basis – this is his  work titled “Pi sans Salt and Pepper”:

Looks like mathematicians know how to make scrap quilts, doesn't it??!!

For more math oriented science, check out Ivars Peterson's MathTrek blog at http://blog.sciencenews.org/

I'm on my way upstairs to make a quilt, but it won't be a Pi quilt - who knows, there might be Pi (er, Pie) for dinner though!