Alternatives to pi day - MathOverflow most recent 30 from http://mathoverflow.net 2013-05-19T22:33:08Z http://mathoverflow.net/feeds/question/1270 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day Alternatives to pi day Anton Geraschenko 2009-10-19T19:40:35Z 2010-07-19T14:53:48Z <p>If you don't already know, <a href="http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=955" rel="nofollow">pi</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi%5FDay" rel="nofollow">day</a> happens on March 14 (3-14) every year. Festivities include reciting digits of pi and eating pies. I understand that it's all in good fun, but I've always felt that pi day is bad PR for mathematics. To non-mathematicians, it gives the impression that mathematics is about voodoo numerology, memorizing (or computing) digits of pi, and bad puns. The bad puns part is pretty accurate, but I don't care for the others.</p> <p>So I propose we come up with some alternatives to pi day that send a better message about what mathematicians do. If you've got an idea, post it here. If possible, include the following information about your proposed holiday:</p> <ul> <li>when is it celebrated?</li> <li>what are the festivities?</li> <li>what kind of food would be associated with this day?</li> </ul> <p>Please post only <strong>one proposed holiday per post</strong>. If you have more than one, please post multiple answers.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/1273#1273 Answer by Anton Geraschenko for Alternatives to pi day Anton Geraschenko 2009-10-19T19:47:02Z 2009-10-20T00:26:54Z <h2>Pigeon-hole Day</h2> <p>Festivities include talking about proofs or arguments that use the pigeon-hole principle (I like that there are lots of these which are accessible). I'm sure there are also games you could come up with (e.g. n+1 people take turns throwing a coin at n jars. If you miss, you go to the back of the line. First one to put the second coin in a jar is eliminated and one jar is removed).</p> <p>Food: not pigeons please. Maybe a cake with more than n interesting features being cut into n pieces.</p> <p>One candidate for the day would be every blue moon (whenever there are two full moons in a month), but this only happens once every three years or so. Another idea is to try using the fact that every day of the week occurs 52 times in a year, except one, which occurs 53 times; I'm not sure of the best way to narrow it down from there.</p> <p><hr /></p> <p>Proposed choice of date:</p> <p>Short answer: November 5th</p> <p>Long Answer: I'm going to stick to nonleap years for a moment. So exactly one day of the week repeats 53 times. In 2009 this is a Thursday, so I'm going to say Thursday from there on out. If it is a different nonleap year, just replace Thursday by whatever day of the week happens on Jan 1st that year. You will get the same answer for the date.</p> <p>Since every month has 4 or 5 of Thursdays, there exactly 7 months which have 4 Thursdays. So at least one quarter of the year has one or less 4-Thursday month. It turns out this is uniquely the 4th quarter, and the month is November. Further, it can't be November 1st or 2nd, because their days of the week happen 5 times. So there must be exactly one Thursday with a single digit date. This turns out to be November 5th.</p> <p>November 5th is also the first time Thursday occurs on the same day of the month for the third time (February 5th and March 5th were also Thursdays.) And it's the farther Thursday in November from Thanksgiving.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/1295#1295 Answer by Jason Dyer for Alternatives to pi day Jason Dyer 2009-10-19T21:58:15Z 2009-10-19T21:58:15Z <p>Paradox Day, which happens on a random day during the year such that it is unexpected which day it is, except of course it couldn't happen December 31st because we'd know by December 30th that it'd have to happen the next day, so it couldn't happen December 30th by the same logic, and so on until January 1st, so logically the holiday couldn't happen, except it ends up happening anyway on say March 4th and is a total surprise.</p> <p>Cake will both be provided and not provided.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/1335#1335 Answer by Anna Varvak for Alternatives to pi day Anna Varvak 2009-10-20T01:30:20Z 2009-10-20T01:30:20Z <p><strong>Intermediate Value Day</strong>, celebrated every equinox (twice a year). </p> <p>Food: avocados and persimmons, because they have to be just right to be delicious: too ripe, and they are rotten, too green and they are gross.</p> <p>Games include that ball game that the French play, where the point is to throw your ball as close as possible to a special small ball.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/1350#1350 Answer by mutecypher for Alternatives to pi day mutecypher 2009-10-20T03:07:08Z 2009-10-20T03:07:08Z <p>We could celebrate Fibonacci Day on November 23 (US month/day ordering), with a particularly extravagant celebration planned for '58. The activities could include the burning of Dan Brown novels (creative use of propellants and accelerants encouraged), bisecting nautilus shells, and counting sunflower seeds.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/1426#1426 Answer by Gerald Edgar for Alternatives to pi day Gerald Edgar 2009-10-20T13:34:29Z 2009-10-20T13:34:29Z <p>Guess what! Mole Day is this Friday. <a href="http://www.moleday.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.moleday.org/</a> Chemistry students everywhere will be celebrating.</p> <p>I think Pi day is fine. It is not intended to convince the general public of anything. It is a fun activity for mathematics students.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/1429#1429 Answer by Michael E for Alternatives to pi day Michael E 2009-10-20T13:48:13Z 2009-10-20T13:48:13Z <p><strong>Incompleteness Day</strong>. I don't know when it would be for sure (the last day of the first month on which the last day is not Saturday, perhaps?, but all party paraphernalia is either missing pieces or somehow inconsistent (e.g. clashing colors, discordant).</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/1811#1811 Answer by Scott Morrison for Alternatives to pi day Scott Morrison 2009-10-22T04:38:10Z 2009-10-22T04:38:10Z <p>I recall one pi day at Penn State some grad students put up flyers announcing that they would construct a 65535-gon. Unfortunately I couldn't make it.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/4309#4309 Answer by Mensen for Alternatives to pi day Mensen 2009-11-05T23:04:27Z 2009-11-05T23:04:27Z <p>I've always thought it was a bit silly to make such a fuss about a date that approximates some transcendental number rather than celebrate the birthday of a mathematician like Gauss, Ramchundra, or Hilbert (to name a very small subset of good choices). Individuals help to humanize the discipline, help the general public to understand why people choose to pursue mathematics, and most have very interesting life stories.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/4338#4338 Answer by Ross Churchley for Alternatives to pi day Ross Churchley 2009-11-06T05:37:38Z 2009-11-06T06:20:32Z <p>For better or worse, Pi Day seems to be already fairly well established. I propose a modified <strong>Pi Day holiday 'weekend'</strong> which would aim to broaden its focus and break some of the stereotypes your question concerns, while cashing in on its 'name recognition'.</p> <p><em>March 13.</em> 313 is a twin prime and a palindrome, so there are plenty of ways we could go with this, although I can't think of any specific activities. It might be fun to kick off the festivities with an organized <strong>Trimathlon</strong> event - that is, some sort of grand scavenger-hunting, puzzle-solving, team competition.</p> <p><em>March 14.</em> <strong>Pi Day</strong>. I'd like to second the recommendation of Buffon's Needle related activities for this. </p> <p><em>March 15</em> happens to be <strong>Leonhard Euler's birthday</strong>. As Mensen suggests, celebrating individual mathematicians helps humanize the discipline. Perhaps a famous-mathematican costume contest? Euler's contributions in particular are another source of activities; the video game <em>Katamari Damacy</em> is a great one to do with exponential growth.</p> <p>EDIT: <em>Removed a couple overly cynical remarks in the first paragraph expressing skepticism about whether alternatives would catch on with the general public.</em></p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/31322#31322 Answer by Doug Chatham for Alternatives to pi day Doug Chatham 2010-07-10T19:08:46Z 2010-07-10T19:08:46Z <p>How about <a href="http://mathaware.org/about.mam.html" rel="nofollow">Mathematics Awareness Month</a>?</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/31330#31330 Answer by Theo Johnson-Freyd for Alternatives to pi day Theo Johnson-Freyd 2010-07-10T20:53:20Z 2010-07-10T20:53:20Z <p>There's always $e$ day, which falls on the 72nd day of February (rounding 71.8 up). Note that which day in the usual calendar this is depends on whether it is a leap year.</p> <p>In Europe, and actually everywhere that is not the US or Liberia, they celebrate $e$ day on the 27th day of Hexadecember (the 18th month), just like $\pi$ day in the rest of the world is on the 3rd of Dodecemeber.</p> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/1270/alternatives-to-pi-day/32505#32505 Answer by Punxas for Alternatives to pi day Punxas 2010-07-19T14:53:48Z 2010-07-19T14:53:48Z <p>Pi Approximation Day on July 22nd. (ie, 22/7)</p> <p>I celebrate it every year, by going out in the summer and getting cake, instead of pie like we do in March. It's approximately pie :)</p>