Happy Pi Day! A dedication and a challenge…

It’s March 14th ~  and if you’re a mathy person, you’re probably already baking various number-shaped treats to celebrate Pi Day! 

For those who aren’t so mathy…all the fuss is about the date, 3-14, and the fact that this date makes up the first three digits of pi, the mathematical relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle. It goes on after the 3.14, of course…

3.1415926535… and…well…it goes on.  You can click here to see the first million digits. Or visit PiDay.org for more pi-related awesomeness.

I’m dedicating today’s Pi Day post to the following people, some real and one made-up:

Real people first… My son and his school team competed in the State MathCOUNTS competition for New York yesterday and did a fantastic job, both concentrating and having fun in what was a pretty high-pressure environment.  Go, SMS Team!

Now the made-up person…  Claire, the main character in my December figure skating novel, SUGAR AND ICE, isn’t just a skater; she’s also a talented math student who has to juggle her intense new skating schedule with a big "Math out of Bounds" research project on Fibonacci.  (Do you know about the Fibonacci sequence? Personally, I think there ought to be a Fibonacci Day, too, but that’s a subject for another post.)

I’ve been reviewing page proofs for SUGAR AND ICE this weekend and had to stop and smile at the part where a friend teases Claire about her passion for math club, calling her Pi-Face. 

Claire would love this NPR Pi Day feature I found this morning.  It explains a new kind of poetry…pi-ku.  It’s like Haiku, only the syllables correspond to the digits in pi. Like so…

Line 1 = 3 syllables
Line 2 = 1 syllable
Line 3 = 4 syllables

My attempts…

Roof-music,
Rain,
Perfect Sunday.

And…

Proofreading
Pi
Makes me crave pie.

So who’s feeling both mathy and poetic enough this morning to give it a try in the comments section?  Come on…I double-pi dare you!

17 Replies on “Happy Pi Day! A dedication and a challenge…

  1. Shoe fly pie
    Hot
    Day in July

    I’ve never actually had this kind of pie but it seemed to go well with the rest of the pi-ku.

    And pi-kudos to the SMS team!

  2. My mother-in-law made great shoe fly pie. It is made with molasses and can be terrible, but hers was great.
    My pi-ku:

    Walk the woods,
    me
    three cats one dog.

    It is hilarious. The cats run ahead, lie down and look really mad when I walk by. “Doesn’t she know enough to take a break?” Then they run ahead again. Meanwhile the dog leaps small bushes at a single bound and brings me sticks till I find one I want to throw. Then she’s spronking through the woods till she finds it. Runs off with it, till she’s ready for another throw. Then she drops it where I can get it. We go half a mile twice a day in our own woods.
    I am looking forward to Sugar and Ice!

  3. Being a cat person I can clearly picture this scene in my mind. (I once had a cat who would play soccer with me on the front lawn)

  4. I have two bad pi-ku. 🙂

    Disney makes
    me
    miss my three kids.

    Fireworks light
    the
    night with color.

    You can tell I’ve been in Orlando for work the past few days. Home today (yeah!). Happy Pi Day!