MIlk Maid
Tuesday, March 14, marked one of my favorite holidays. It’s a holiday more geared toward fans of math and fans of circles.
But even those dessert minded folks among us can enjoy it. Yes, it was Pi Day. Not to be confused with Pie Day, which was held in January. Pi Day is an annual celebration of math’s more than one trillion digit number with the 3, 1 and 4 being the most significant digits.
Most of us can probably remember using pi, or 3.14, to calculate the area of circles in math classes. March 14 was always the best day in math class as my teachers were feeling festive as they would bring us oatmeal cream pies, lemon, chocolate, apple and even pizza pies. When I was in college at South Dakota State, the mathematics club hosted their annual Pi Day celebration. That basically meant they served a buffet of different pies to all of us broke, hungry college kids.
It became pretty competitive so you had to make sure you timed it right and that you had an exit strategy. It was like “Black Friday” for pie. I have a few college friends that really enjoy Pi Day puns and jokes as we exchange them all throughout the day.
One of the punniest jokes I received that day was, “Who was the roundest knight at King Arthur’s table?” “It was Sir Cumference… He ate too much pi!”
It was a good joke for a nice chuckle and an eye roll. On a few of my different social media accounts, you were able to use different pie frames and filters. They ranged from apple pie to a good pizza pie. Yum! Even some retailers enjoy promoting Pi Day. Different local and national deals that I have found range from discounted pie slices to discounted pot pies and even sweet deals on pizzas. It all sounds pi-sitively delicious to me! I didn’t know anything about the history behind pi day, so I decided to check it out.
The earliest known official or large scale celebration of Pi Day took place in 1988 in San Francisco with fruit pies organized by a physicist. In March of 2009, the United States House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution to recognize March 14 as National Pi Day.
In honor of Pi Day, I enjoyed some delicious pies-a Hawaiian pizza pie and lemon meringue! After all, it’s a day designed just for pi enthusiasts-math and dessert minded!