Tired of simply reading pages and pages of digits?
Okay, that might be a bit of a stretch, but there are plenty of great books about pi that actually use words and pictures too! We have listed some of our favorite pi books below, with links to pick them up on Amazon.com.
We’ve read many more than these, and they only make us love pi more. Give them a try, and keep them on-hand in the classroom for the occasional curious student.
Click on the books to jump right to their Amazon pages!
It Happened One Pi Day: The Easy Way to Memorize Pi
A powerful and elegant method for memorizing Pi, or any number, is wrapped into this charming book with beautiful illustrations. Written by a family who tapped into the most cutting-edge competitive memory techniques, found some pretty serious success (now easily rattling off hundreds of digits each!), and decided to share it with the rest of us. Surely the only book on this list that contains the phrase: “Count Dracula, Posing with a Kazoo.” Enjoy!
The Joy of Pi
The original, classic book that popularized Pi’s history and made it easy and fun to learn. It also contains 1 million digits of Pi, in the tiniest print you’ve ever seen. A must-have for the bookshelf of every teacher and math lover alike!
Not A Wake
There is nothing else in the world like this book, and the tireless experiment that its author, Michael Keith, undertook for the benefit of only the truest Pi fans. It is literally 10,000 digits of Pi, converted into words of the length of each successive digit, across an entire book. Buy it for the eerie poetry, the screenplay, the crossword puzzles, or simply for the shock value. One of a kind.
Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi
This children’s book strikes a great balance between story and teaching. The plot is exciting enough not to be upstaged by the clever lessons about pi! Part of an excellent series of math-themed adventures, all with the same engaging illustrations and unabashed and delightful mathematical wordplay.
Pi: A Biography of the World’s Most Mysterious Number
Now we’re getting serious. If “Joy of Pi” is the appetizer, this book is the main course. A thorough journey through the number’s history, with as much depth as any curious student might want without straying from an accessible, narrative style.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
[…] to your local or school library and check out a book about Pi! These three titles are a good place to […]
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!