LaSalle educator celebrates math on Pi Day

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 14, 2025 5:47 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 minutes ago

The vice president of the Ontario Association for Mathematics Education says pi is 1 of the astir beauteous numbers successful mathematics due to the fact that of the galore places it turns up successful beingness that are not connected to circles.

David Petro made the comments connected CBC's Windsor Morning successful honour of Pi Day, which falls connected March 14, and which celebrates the fig obtained by dividing the circumference of a ellipse by its diameter. 

The date, the fourteenth time of the 3rd period of the year, corresponds astir to the worth of pi: astir 3.14159.

"It's an important fig successful mathematics," said Petro, the vice main astatine Villanova High School successful La Salle, Ont.

"Your compartment telephone does not enactment the mode it does without pi being known to a definite fig of decimal places."

Math has a nationalist relations problem, Petro said, truthful mathematics teachers similar him invited opportunities similar Pi Day to observe the tract of study, adjacent if it's conscionable by eating a portion of pie.

Petro celebrated by wearing a garment that read, "My PIN is the past 4 digits of pi."

"That would beryllium an absorbing joke, a comic joke, successful mathematics circles, due to the fact that pi is a decimal that goes connected forever," helium said.

"And it ne'er repeats. … Of people my PIN is successful determination somewhere. It's conscionable possibly not the end."

Pi Day is simply a comparatively caller improvement arsenic days of observance go, and Petro credited the net with giving commencement to it.

"There's a large mathematics assemblage online that talks astir these things each the time," helium said.

He utilized the juncture to encourage people to clasp math, adjacent if they don't deliberation they're bully astatine it.

"If you're 1 of those radical that says, you know, 'I could ne'er bash math' … I deliberation you're incorrect there," helium said.

"You mightiness person not  …  had the acquisition of doing good in, quote, schoolhouse math. But we bash mathematics each day. And springiness yourself immoderate recognition astir the mathematics and the mental, you know, calisthenics you person to bash to bash that mathematics connected the fly."