The jealousies of pi

March 14 was, of course, Pi Day (hint: the number starts 3.14).

Harvard had its annual celebration, and this year, BC senior James Niles-Joyal recited the first 3,141 digits (hint: the number starts 3.141).

My favorite part, though, is the way the Harvard kids rag on him (listen to the last clip on the page).

Apparently, memorizing the first 3,141 digits of pi isn't an entirely useless exercise, but it is an insult to people who care about the number.

Uh-huh.

Here are the first 10,000 digits, on the off chance you're interested.

Oh, I may owe you a pi story. Here goes. I first learned about pi in sixth grade. My math teacher told us pi could be represented as a fraction as "22/7." She also told us that no one had ever found a pattern in pi.

So I did what any reasonable sixth-grade wiseass would do: I divided 22 by seven and got 3.142857142857142857... I couldn't believe people were looking for patterns in this number and hadn't taken it far enough to pick up a six-numeral pattern.

On passing her in the hall I had mentioned I had found the pattern people were looking for in pi, and she asked to see my work the next day.

The work, of course, was correct. It was the fractional representation that, it turns out, was an approximation. Sigh.