A one-stop Pi Day shop for teachers and number lovers
Plans for Pi Day ’14?
What are you up to this Pi Day season? Each year is unique for me, as I seek new audiences with whom to share in the joy of our crazy number. In 2013, I spent Pi Day in Manhattan, speaking to a couple hundred middle schoolers who were on a field trip to the National Museum of Mathematics (or MoMath for short). It’s an amazing and still quite new institution that you should most certainly visit the next time you’re in the Big Apple. Later that day, I spoke at a private company’s Pi Day celebration. Pretty cool that Pi Day isn’t just celebrated in classrooms, eh?
This year, I’ve got three events lined up, all of which are in my home state of Colorado.
- On March 6, I’ll be sharing in some early Pi Day fun with students at a local elementary school.
- On March 13, I’ll be talking about all things Pi on Colorado Matters, a daily program on Colorado Public Radio.
- On March 14, I’ll be giving a guest lecture at 4:00pm in the Math Department at the University of Colorado in Boulder (open to the public).
I’m excited to have three very different events on the slate this year! And my eyes and ears are always open for last-minute invitations and requests, or for ideas about where I might spend my Pi Day next year! (We’ll come back to the important topic of Pi Day ’15, or 3.14.15, in a future post!)
Okay, that’s plenty about me. What are you and your students (or your friends, family, or coworkers) up to this Pi Day? Send over your fun stories, either before or after, and perhaps we’ll collect enough to warrant a dedicated page here on TeachPi.org where they can be shared and enjoyed by everyone else!
Your Pi pal,
Luke
Hi Luke,
Just discovered your website. Nice! I’m sharing your website with readers of my blog at http://climeconnections.blogspot.com. Click on my link above to see my Pi Day post last year. Any of your sessions being recorded? I would love to see your presentation(s)!
-Ihor
My students are looking forward to PI Day. We celebrate with various activities. In my seventh grade class they discover how pi is derived as part of their state standards. We make pi posters and display them in the commons. This year I am adding a scavenger hunt since each of my seventh and eighth graders have an IPad along with making a presentation on what they learned on their scavenger hunt trip. The staff votes for PI Day Prince and Princess and the winners get their picture in the paper with their pie tin crowns. I make piñatas for each class and we play pin the radious on the circle. Oh yes, we eat too. If you would like to visit our class and school sometime we would love to have you come.
Lightweights! Several months ago, I followed the argument to its logical end: If March 14 (03/14) is Pi DAY, then March 2014 (also within the parameters of 03/14) is Pi MONTH. To that end, I am resolved to have pie in whatever form necessary, every day this month. This includes, but is not limited to: traditional dessert pie, empanadas, quiche, shepherd’s pie, pizza pie and its variants (calzone and stromboli), Cornish pasties, and all other sorts of variants. Imagine my embarrassment when my seventh grade son informed me that, according to this logic, next year should be Super Pi Day (03/14/15). We should start planning now…
We celebrated a little early with our Third Annual Pi Day 5k! Over 600 participants joined the fun this past Saturday and completed a 3.14 mile run/walk to support mathematics/science education programs coordinated by the Teaching and Learning Collaborative. They all received an awesome 3.14 inch medal for finishing!! Check it out here. And next year, plan to join the fun! We had 60 virtual participants from 14 states participate in the event — and next year…the race is on March 14, 2015 at 9:26:53am…why? Well, that gives us 3.141592653… We can’t wait!!
I’ll be letting people know about the new game at mathtricks.org – “Pi vs Pie”. We have 4 young kids, and they just love the game – they just eat it up! Sorry – bad joke. But anyway, it is a good way to get kids interested in math!