Saturday, March 9, 2013

Pi Day is 3/14 again!


Pi (π) is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. By measuring circular objects, it has always turned out that a circle is a little more than 3 times its width around.  The mathematician Archimedes used polygons with many sides to approximate circles and determined that Pi was approximately 22/7.

William Jones first used the symbol for Pi, the Greek symbol “π”, in 1706.  In recent years, Pi has been calculated to over one trillion digits beyond its decimal.

If you are looking for strategies that are both educational and fun, check out these sites:

Pi Day – History, activities, Pi-wear too! 
The Exploratorium Pi Day – easy activities and more links 
Education World – Throw a Pi Day Party!  Lots of additional links.  
Pinterest – Shari Bithell’s Pi Day Activities 
NCTM Celebrate Pi Day! Articles, links and activities.  

2 comments:

CCSSI Mathematics said...

A contrarian view of Pi Day:

http://ccssimath.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-life-of-pi.html

VISNOS said...

Happy PI Day
A great resource for explaining PI visually using a polygon to circle approximation can be found at
http://www.visnos.com/demos/pi

Very visual and interactive so not too difficult to understand. Even works on an iPad.