Pi Day: How can you celebrate 3.14159?

Pi Day-3/14.

In two years, the irrational number will have its Congressionally-recognized holiday represented by the year's digit as well, as it will be 3/14/15. Pi, or π, is representative of the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Most reference the number as simply 3.14159, but as an irrational number, it cannot be accurately represented by a fraction and therefore technically has infinite digits.

Pi Day has been celebrated many different ways every year. The most popular illustration of the holiday is to feast on pie, with an e, to honor the number. Retailers often offer sales of 3.14 percent or some lower price items discounted to $3.14. Some people find it appropriate to watch movies and television shows involving pi, such as "Life of Pi." But why celebrate a seemingly random number in this fashion?

Pi Day was first honored in 1988 by the San Francisco Exploratorium, a science museum in the Bay Area, to draw attention to its importance. It's used as a figure in calculations for everything from physics to astronomy. The University of Delaware's Tom Fernsler said that pi was crucial in landing a man on the moon.

"Reaching the moon required the rendezvous of two separate spacecrafts," Fernsler said. "That meant the intersection of two spherical orbits required calculations involving pi." In other words, without Archimedes, there would be no Neil Armstrong," he told the "Wilmington News-Journal".

Pi is often a numeral factor in many calculations. "Dr. Math" at Drexel University lists a number of uses for pi, one of which has to do with everyday activities like air travel.

"When planes fly great distances they are actually flying on an arc of a circle. The path must be calculated as such in order to accurately gauge fuel use, etc. Additionally, when locating yourself on a globe, pi comes into the calculation in most methods."

In 2009, the US Congress officially recognized Pi Day for a number of reasons including raising awareness of the problems a number of American children are having with the subject of math.

"Whereas, according to the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) survey done by the National Center for Education Statistics, American children in the 4th and 8th grade were outperformed by students in other countries including Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, England, South Korea, Latvia, and Japan," reads part of H.R. 224.

At age 25, Daniel Tammet of France recited 22,514 digits of pi from memory in 2004 on Pi Day.

Scientists, politicians and students alike find Pi Day an opportunity to remind the public the importance such a tiny factor of mathematics deserves such respect in this way.