Friday, March 14, 2014

March 14th is Pi Day

Being a fully qualified member of the Nerd species, it is my duty to report all news related to math, Sci-Fi and computers. For those of you who have not yet heard, today in the geek community is Pi Day. This actually only works in America because America is the only country dumb enough to put the month before the day when writing the date. 

Date format comparison
This is why there are no pyramids in the US
Anyway, when written in American date notation, today's date is 3/14 which just happens to be the same as the first 3 digits of the universal constant pi (π). Pi is the relationship between the radius of a circle and it's circumference and is roughly equivalent to 22/7 or 3.1415926535. The exact value of pi is incalculable since it is an irrational number; it cannot be exactly represented by a fraction.

Popular theory suggests that pi was discovered by the Egyptians and the Babylonians, and was named after the famous and really smart Greek mathematician, and philosopher, Pythagoras.

Pythagoras - they named Pi after him
Day > Month > Year - Eureka!
If we take Pi Day to the extreme then the exact moment of π was at 3:48am and if you want to get really technical it occurred during the 57th second of that minute.

Today, you will no doubt experience countless memes wishing you a Happy Pi Day with some clever picture of Pi on a Pie. We at Slap the Penguin refuse to sink that low and instead have opted for more intellectual image for Pi Day.

The flag of the French Revolution
The French Revolution...?
Happy Pi Day everyone.

7 comments :

Anonymous said...

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Brad Naylor said...

Thanks for your kind words, Steven. It's nice to know that we are appreciated.

I checked out your blog and it certainly made me smile to myself a few times. The furiously masturbating substitute teacher made me smirk.

Guest posting on your blog would certainly be a great way to show our appreciation for your support, and maybe you would like to enter our guest post contest. http://www.slapthepenguin.com/2013/12/slap-penguin-guest-post-contest-2014.html

Thanks for reading

Anonymous said...

That would be awesome. Any trendy topic will do. If you've read the blog you know the direction it takes. I will definitely enter the contest. Again, many thanks, Steve

P.S. There's a submit area on the blog or you can send to smrogers305@gmail.com

Thanks again

Anonymous said...

“This actually only works in America because America is the only country dumb enough to put the month before the day when writing the date.”
Doesn’t Japan also put the month before the day when writing the date? It seems that it’s rarer to find Japan putting day before month when writing dates than in America.

Anonymous said...

"This actually only works in America because America is the only country dumb enough to put the month before the day when writing the date."
and you are dumb enough to assume that ISO 8601 doesn't put year before month before day when writing the date (year-month-day)
You're going to say that US is dumb enough to put minutes before second next.
How does 2014-03-14 only work in US? Oh you're using that format (on the url it says 2014/3) and then think it's dumb. Hypocrites.
Do your research first.

Bradnomynous Naylornymous said...

Thanks, "Anonymous" for your faceless contribution to the discussion. I accept, understand and agree that ISO 8601 exists and has been the standard date format for information exchange for over 30 years, and you have inadvertently unlined the point of this post, and made yourself look like the dumb person. ISO 8601 starts with the largest divisible unit (YEAR) and works through progressively smaller units sequentially, MONTH then DAY then HOUR, MINUTE etc. The first image identifies that the order of listing units is from smallest division to largest, ISO 8601 merely reverses that in order for computers to sort dates more efficiently.

So while you are correct in your statement, you either ignored, or misunderstood the point that in everyday date writing the US, as a nation, write M-D-Y which is out of sequence with the rest of the world and also your beloved ISO 8601.

Our research was done and our conclusions were drawn and our findings published. Maybe if you took the opportunity to re-read the entire text you would discover that firstly, we are correct, and secondly this is satire, and thirdly you are a dumbass, which is probably why you used the name Anonymous to sign your comment.

Thanks for reading, don't forget to click our sponsor's links to make them send us money.

Anonymous said...

"America is the only country dumb enough to put the month before the day when writing the date."

How is Mainland Chinese date format, yyyy/dd/mm more logical than yyyy/mm/dd?
Mainland China: Year > Day < Month
What you think is dumb enough: Year > Month > Day

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