Pi(e) Day
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I don't recall whether we've had anything interesting to say about "Pi Day", other than a reference to SMBC's "PIE Day" back in 2023.
Today's Frazz notes the adjacency to the Ides of March:
No doubt there are other Pi Day comics this year — looking back further, there's a collection from Pragmatic Mom a year ago, and a few years earlier from nebusresearch, and many others…
There's certainly no other mathematical construct with as many comic-strip resonances, though there are some obvious opportunities for tau.
Update — as Gretchen McCulloch points out, Wikipedia cites a historical family connection between π and PIE. William Jones (1675-1749)
was a Welsh mathematician best known for his use of the symbol π (the Greek letter Pi) to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter
while his son, Sir William Jones (1746-1794)
is known for being one of the earliest scholars to assert the kinship of the Indo-European languages, albeit not the first.
AntC said,
March 14, 2026 @ 4:25 pm
3.14.yy doesn't work (neither big-endian nor small-endian) for such as Brits who arrange dates sensibly. Clearly π day should be 22/7.
Eliphas said,
March 14, 2026 @ 10:55 pm
Hello. Sorry for posting off-topic but I can’t post any comments in more relevant articles.
I believe “that” in the following post by the POTUS is nonrestrictive/supplementary appositive relative/complementizer THAT unless it refers only to “others” and he puts an excessive comma after "others”.
If it’s nonrestrictive relative that, it counts as a rare example.
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3106
【Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, **that** are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated.】
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116227904143399817
Bob Ladd said,
March 15, 2026 @ 4:02 am
I had always thought that π must have been named that way by Ancient Greek mathematicians, so once again I've learned something new from Language Log. I now also realize that the present-day tendency of linguists to use Greek-letter abbreviations for technical terms (φ for "phonological phrase", σ for "syllable", and so on) is part of a long tradition, not a recent affectation. (NB: this convention can't be defended by saying that the words abbreviated this way are of Greek origin – that doesn't account for ω being used for "(phonological) word".)
Jenny Chu said,
March 15, 2026 @ 7:19 am
March 14 is a date remarkably tied to scientific stuff: it is the birthday of Albert Einstein, and the death day of Leonard Nimoy and Stephen Hawking.
But I rather miss the era when it was not yet "Pi Day" … it was just my birthday, mine and Albert's.
Viseguy said,
March 15, 2026 @ 3:44 pm
When I was in law school, in the '70s, and students took notes with pen and paper, we often wrote "Π" for plaintiff and "Δ" for defendant. (And "Κ" for contract, though I can't say that I ever thought of it as kappa.) I'm guessing that "P" and "D" are more common in this era of laptops and tablets.
HS said,
March 15, 2026 @ 8:44 pm
Do they celebrate Pi Day on March the 2nd in Indiana?
Condign Harbinger said,
March 16, 2026 @ 11:41 am
3.14 is American Pi Day. 22/7 is the Feast of the Rational Approximation.
Philip Taylor said,
March 18, 2026 @ 3:25 am
I had thought that someone other than myself might fail to understand "Do they celebrate Pi Day on March the 2nd in Indiana ?" but it would seem that it is clear to all but me. I must therefore ask : "Why ?" (why, that is, might they celebrate Pi Day on March the 2nd in Indiana, rather than why is it only I who fails to understand).
HS said,
March 18, 2026 @ 4:47 pm
@Philip Taylor
perhaps I should have given a link. Just do a google search for pi + Indiana and hopefully it will become clear. Any mathematician will be amused and/or horrified and/or depressed.
Philip Taylor said,
March 19, 2026 @ 5:24 am
Thank you HS — I suppose that one needs to be steeped in US history in order to recognise the significance, which this Briton most certainly is not …
HS said,
March 19, 2026 @ 6:21 pm
I don't know whether you have to be steeped in American history to recognize the reference. I'm not American and I've never been to Indiana – it's just one of those curious and interesting factoids that you stumble across. Also, these things get changed and exaggerated in the telling. It seems the Indiana Pi Bill was about squaring the circle and a value of pi=3.2 just fell out of it, but in the version that I originally heard the story the bill specifically defined pi to be exactly 3!
I'd never heard of Pi Day before reading this post, and I can't say my life has been the poorer for it. In my opinion there are too many of these special "days" already. As well as being Pi Day, the 14th of March is also apparently National Write Your Story Day,
National Children's Craft Day, National Potato Chip Day (I kid you not), Learn About Butterflies Day, and Save a Spider Day, amongst others (if Google AI is to be believed).
If we have a Pi Day, why not other mathematical constants? e Day is presumably February the 7th (this is an American blog so, as with Pi Day, I am following the bizarre American practice of specifying dates in MM/DD/YY format), but what about i Day? Perhaps it is the 1st of January of the previous year…
HS said,
March 21, 2026 @ 6:55 pm
Here in New Zealand, Pi(e) Day this year is unquestionably August the 4th, when the results of the national Supreme Pie Awards are announced. (Forget the Oscars – this is important!) But as any true-blooded Kiwi knows, any day is potentially Pie Day in New Zealand!
Below is a sample of a handful of the approximately one million* webpages from New Zealand devoted to pies. Apologies for the excessive number of links, and I will fully understand if this comment gets deleted because of them, but this is just to indicate the importance that this subject holds in the heart and minds – and stomachs – of all** New Zealanders…
https://seethesouthisland.com/top-12-pies-in-the-south-island-new-zealand/
https://thespinoff.co.nz/kai/27-09-2024/a-tasting-tour-of-wellingtons-best-pies ***
https://chuckbphilosophy.medium.com/travelers-warning-the-problem-with-pie-in-new-zealand-b1cef050efcc
https://theculturetrip.com/pacific/new-zealand/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-new-zealand-meat-pie
https://azpieguys.com/2024/11/09/the-ultimate-guide-to-new-zealand-meat-pies-a-kiwi-classic/
"https://nztraveltips.com/meat-pies-new-zealand/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/experiences/food-and-wine-holidays/128835771/the-great-nz-pie-trails-are-these-the-best-pies-in-new-zealand
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/experiences/food-and-wine-holidays/300357158/new-zealands-best-small-town-bakeries-the-pie-stops-we-missed
* this is just a guess and almost certainly an over-estimate. It's really more of an emotional truth than a mathematical one. There are 5 million New Zealanders and they are all almost certain to have an opinion on pies, but sadly probably not all of them have webpages devoted to the subject.
** there are probably a few New Zealanders who don't like pies – vegetarians and other weirdos – but they are by definition not true-blooded Kiwis.
*** sadly, the delicious chicken, kumara, and mango pies you used to be able to get at some supermarkets no longer seem to be produced. But in compensation, one of the shops downtown is currently offering a $3 special on lamb and mint pies. Delicious!
Anselm said,
March 22, 2026 @ 7:49 am
The tax on motor vehicles here in Germany is based, in part, on the cubic capacity of the engine. Cylinders being round this means that π is involved, and the original formula for calculating the cubic capacity for tax purposes basically set π=3.12 (which would make MY birthday “pi day”, yay).
The current EU-wide formula, though, fixes the “tax value” of π at 3.1416, probably due to the wider availability of computers and electronic calculators.
Philip Taylor said,
March 22, 2026 @ 9:15 am
Then let us hope that a mathematically literate car owner who finds his (or her) motor vehicle wrongly classified in a significantly higher tax band than it should be takes the matter before the courts …