Pi Day Celebration. Happy Pi Day "Probably no symbol in mathematics has evoked as much mystery,...

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Pi Day Celebration Duxbury Middle High School Math History Week

Transcript of Pi Day Celebration. Happy Pi Day "Probably no symbol in mathematics has evoked as much mystery,...

Pi Day Celebration

Duxbury Middle High School

Math History Week

Happy Pi Day

"Probably no symbol in mathematics has evoked as much mystery, romanticism, misconception and

human interest as the number pi”

Blatner, David. The Joy of Pi. Walker Publishing Company, Inc. New York, 1997

π=3.1415 and tomorrow is 3/14/15

A Brief History of Pi

Evidence of a fascination with π dates back to 2500 B.C.

The ratio of the perimeter of the Great Pyramid of Giza to the height of the pyramid is

EXACTLY 2π

Archimedes of Syracuse 287-212 B.C.

Beginnings of an approximation of Pi

3.1408<π<3.14285

Using the ratio of the area of a polygon

circumscribed to the ratio of a polygon

inscribed in a circle, Archimedes

approximated Pi using a 96 sided polygon.

This method was used a second time by a Chinese Mathematician, Zhu Chongzhi, 600 years later. Chongzhi approximated Pi with a 12,288 sided polygon!

Why π?

The pi symbol was taken from the Greek word for Perimeter

The symbol was first used in 1707 by William Jones, then

Later popularized by Leonhard Euler in 1737

October 19, 2011

Shigeru Kondo approximated Pi to 10 trillion digits using a super computer,

setting the record for the longest approximation of Pi.

Math History Week Challenge

Use the QR code to answer!

One lucky student will win a free breakfast sandwich!

For given numbers p and q, three of the following four expressions have the same value:

p + q p – q

p/q p*q

Find the absolute value of the fourth expression.