Today is 3/14, otherwise known as Pi Day!

The calculator I used in high school only went to eight digits, so I memorized Pi as 3.1415927. But the truth is, Pi is special precisely because it can’t be memorized. Because, of course, its string of numbers is infinite. And people around the world are celebrating in wacky ways!

For the educators out there, our Teachers site has some resources about Pi Day – an overview, lesson plans, a field trip, and even a book! But Pi Day can be fun for everyone. As we talked about what to write about on OOM today to celebrate, we thought of a few funny things — like naming our favorite Pi (cherry pie, pizza pie, Pie by Sarah Weeks) but one thing that jumped out at us was this notion of Pi as a unified day to geek out over math.

Math gets a bad rap, right? For many people, it’s not as inviting as a thick book; the numbers throw us off. But math is so, so cool when you start to dive in. The principles that comprise math also comprise the world. Math is all around us.

Still skeptical? Maybe these resources will convince you:

• Math Magazine and DynaMath have loads of math activities that drive home the point
• Math 180, our math intervention program, can help struggling math students have their a-ha! math moment
• Max’s Math Adventures makes math fun, especially for younger kids
• Do the Math is a great resource for math teachers

I’ve become a math convert after so many years of focusing on words. So, a shout-out to all the math geeks — on Pi Day and every day — for making the math world go round!

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