Category: Mathematics

Pi = Spring

~ mehopper

Did you know that Tuesday, March 14 is Pi Day?

I’m both a geek and a softy for cool numbers, so I’ve known of Pi Day since not long after Larry Shaw made news about it with his escapades at the Exploratorium in the 1980s.

Although, I’m more aware of it than “usual” because I’ve been working on the Mathematics page on Cosma — it just naturally came up 🙂

If you don’t know what Pi Day is, then there are lots of ways to find out about it.

In fact, when you Google Pi Day, you’ll get around a whopping 1,290,000,000 results. Ironically, if you Google Pi Day Facts you’ll get a slightly more overwhelming 1,300,000,000 results (Hummmm, that’s “interesting”).

A simple way to cut through all that would be to search out the Wikipedia page about it.

However, I prefer going to the source, so I’m partial to the Exploratorium’s Pi Page.

There’s also a dedicated “Pi Day” site that has a page with the Top 25 Most Interesting Pi Facts. My favorite fact is that March 14th also happens to be Albert Einstein birthday!

One thing they fail to mention is the whole “Pi Day Food” thing. If you Google Pi Day Deals 2023, you will see that sources ranging from CNET to Good Housekeeping will give you advice on where to get deals on Pies and Pizza.

Now I personally prefer to learn about things using YouTube videos.

Alas, searching YouTube for Pi Day is only a bit less overwhelming than searching the Web. There are thousands of videos, and many of them are, non-coincidentally, 3.14 minutes long.

I spent awhile rummaging through them and think this minute long video is one of the best.

cleveland.com (YouTube Channel)
Cleveland.com (Official Website)

Now, for a bit o’ fun, it turns out that searching YouTube for Pi Day Song turns up slightly fewer videos. Here’s one of the cuter ones.

Tiny Tunes (YouTube Channel)
Tiny Tunes (Facebook)

Here’s another fun video from one of my favorite YouTube channels.

FlippyCat (YouTube Channel)
FlippyCat (Facebook)

I must confess that frequenting the FlippyCat YouTube Channel is akin to watching cat videos.

In fact, one of my favorite Flippy Cat videos features a cat!

FlippyCat (YouTube Channel)
FlippyCat (Facebook)

Ahhh, but I digress, a lot.

Onward, one of the reasons that Pi Day is so near and dear to my heart is that it is also one of a triad of holidays that serve as a prelude to the official start of Spring on March 20th (the other two were St. Pat’s and the Holi Festival of Colors).

So this post is also a salutation to Spring!

Happy Pi Day + Spring!

Find out more about Mathematics and Holidays …

Sexagesimal

~ mehopper

If you don’t happen to know the definition of Sexagesimal (Wolfram, Wikipedia), you might think it could be some strange kind of activity that goes on at festivals like Burning Man (Wired, Wikipedia). If you happen to be a computer geek, you might have guessed it has something to do with numbers (as in binary, hex, etc.), and you would be right. If you’re a numbers geek or a mathematician, then you probably already know the cool research that this post is going to be describing.

But first, here’s a bit of review for those who are neither numbers geeks nor mathematicians. You were probably taught in school that there are different ways of counting. We use “base 10”, but there are other number systems. For example, computers are based on binary (base 2), and there is a group of people who would like to revolutionize the world by using duodecimal (base 12). Here’s a nice video that explains all about “Base Number Systems.”

Macmatics (YouTube Channel)

Well, the ancient Babylonian’s used sexagesimal (base 60), and some new research suggests that they not only beat the ancient Greeks at inventing Trigonometry (Wikipedia), they also may have been able to do it better. Here’s a video and story about the research that was conducted by Daniel F. Mansfield and N.J. Wildberger from the University of New South Wales and published in Historia Mathematica.

University of New South Wales (YouTube Channel)
University of New South Wales (Official Website)

Plimpton 322 is Babylonian Exact Sexagesimal Trigonometry (Daniel F. Mansfield & N.J. Wildberger, Historia Mathematica)

Here are more videos and articles about the research.

Science Magazine (YouTube Channel)
Science Magazine (Official Website)

This 3,700-Year-Old Babylonian Clay Tablet Just Changed The History of Maths (David Sield, Science Alert)
Math Whizzes of Ancient Babylon Figured Out Forerunner of Calculus (Ron Cowen, AAAS Science Magazine)
Ancient Babylonian Astronomers Calculated Jupiter’s Position from the Area Under a Time-Velocity Graph (Mathieu Ossendrijver, AAAS Science)

So, there you have it, sexagesimal is neat stuff!

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