HHS classrooms celebrate Pi Day

Wednesday, March 14 was a big day at Hopkins High School. The girls basketball team went to the state championship and students participated in a national walk-out. While all these impressive and inspiring feats of students were going on, there was another exciting event being celebrated, a tradition that goes back decades, centuries even: Pi Day.

March 14th (or 3/14) is known as Pi Day to celebrate the well-known and beloved mathematical constant pi, which is rounded to 3.14, a number defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.

Perhaps the only thing that could match the infinite nature of the digits in pi is the seemingly infinite amount of love that students at HHS have for this number.

“Out of all the mathematical constants, pi is definitely my favorite. What other number can be squared and then multiplied by a radius to give you the area of a circle?”  said one especially passionate math student.

Math classes showed their pi-preciation by taking time from their busy schedules of teaching invaluable topics to just chow down on some of those scrumptious aforementioned baked goods.

Mr. Brent Hering’s AP Calculus BC class enjoyed an assortment of pies, ranging from apple, to cherry, to a french silk that was completely eaten before I could even have a slice but it’s fine. I’m fine.

For those who enjoy a good pie and even better deals, Whole Foods offered large bakery pies for $3.14 less than the usual price. Pizza places all across the country sold pies of a slightly different kind with an irrational $3.14 price tag.

The number of pi is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be expressed as a fraction. This means that the statement I just made about an irrational price tag was, in fact, very funny. Hopefully this makes up for the fact that Pi Day is over and those deals are gone. Sorry!

Not everyone is so excited Pi Day however. Some are arguing that pi gets too much recognition, and that other mathematical constants should have a turn in the spotlight.

Mathematician Michael Hartl says we should be celebrating tau, a number exactly twice as big as pi.

“Pi is a confusing and unnatural choice for the circle constant…pi is half of something.” Hartl wrote in his Tau Manifesto. “We should be celebrating June 28 as Tau Day.”

All in all, no matter where you stand on the argument of gun control, or what you think about sports, this celebration of pi and pie brought many students together. Except of course those who don’t like pie, but then, who really cares what a pie-hater thinks?