It used to be a festival of fun created and celebrated by geeks but with no official recognition. Now, National Pi Day is a legal holiday in the US (but not one you get to take a day off of work for).
Washington politicians took time from bailouts and earmark-laden spending packages on Wednesday for what might seem like an unusual act: officially designating a National Pi Day.
That's Pi as in ratio-of-a-circle's-circumference-to-diameter, better known as the mathematical constant beginning with 3.14159.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a resolution introduced two days earlier that designates March 14, 2009 (3/14, get it?) as National Pi Day. It urges schools to take the opportunity to teach their students about Pi and "engage them about the study of mathematics."
Backing the measure is a collection of technology and engineering groups, including the Association for Competitive Technology, the American Chemical Society, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, IEEE, TechAmerica, and TechNet.
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Who'd a thunk that they'd get around to that?
So is the start of it 3/14 at 1:59?
I've been reading the pie recipes.
On the date mentioned in the movie for the awakening of the HAL computer in 2001, some of my nerdier friends got together with a birthday/memorial cake for HAL. They put wafers into the cake to represent his circuit boards, and at the end of the birthday part, slowly pulled out the wafers one by one as they sang "Daisy, Daisy..." more and more slowly. I wish I'd heard about it in time to go.
One thought. Somebody should immediately start planning an enormous Pi Day celebration for the year 2015. Starting at 9am.
Pi Day Celebration on 3/14/15 at 9 am.