Tag Archives: math

This is Pi Day (Part 3)

This is Pi Day #041.c

Alas #piday is over for another year… so did you learn anything? With the passing of the great #stephenhawking and the reminder that #einstein was born on what we now call the day of pi, multiple people noted that wouldn’t it be great if we could maybe pause on march 14 to think about more than just pastry… I like it.

This is Pi Day (Part 2)

This is Pi Day #041.b

Having named my web comic after a holiday –albeit a geeky, dad-joke of a holiday– I would have missed a major opportunity ignoring this particular date, a date honouring pi, and pie and pastry and math and all things eclectic about mashing together modern clever culture with overt rationality.

So here you go. It’s pi day. Or Pie Day. Or pizza pie day. Or just plain old March 14th if you prefer.

It’s a day to reflect on the math that makes our world go round. It’s a day to contemplate that the world is round and all those technologies you love so much, including the one that you are reading these words on, wouldn’t work if we didn’t know about things like mathematical constants. It’s a day to learn more about the history of the food we eat and the connection it draws to the languages we’ve honed over millennia in a way that makes it less mysterious why a food and a number share the same jumble of sounds we make when we speak about them. It’s a day to eat something round and to celebrate geeks.

Happy Pi Day.

This is Pi Day (Part 1)

This is Pi Day #041.a

I’ve tried pretty hard over the years to indoctrinate the kid into the fellowship of geekyness, to give her a sense of confidence about knowing interesting things and celebrating big important ideas. In crafting that particular recipe the result is often a roll of the eye or an exasperated sigh…. she is a ten year old after all.

As I post this comic on one the eve of one of the most important mathematical celebrations of the year it is important to take a moment, pause and reflect on the bounty of important discoveries that have improved our lives through science, math and engineering, to recall that through deduction and reasoned thought we are able to improve the lot of all humanity, and in consuming circular pastry filled with the filling of your choice –we’ll be going with blueberry pie this year– we are in fact meditating upon the most cleverest of confluences of nourishing ideals: fulfillment of the mind, the stomach, and the sense of humour.