Pie: I Wish I Could

I first heard of Pi Day one March 14 when my daughter mentioned she needed a pie for school. What a great excuse for a celebration!

π awareness is huge especially since "Life of Pi" came out and how appropriate that it's being released on DVD today. I loved the book and movie and I see yet another blog topic and excuse to play with Photoshop but that's for another day.

All I remember from my school days about pi is that pi = 3.14 followed by a whole bunch of numbers, an infinite number actually (also there's no pattern).

I also remember, because it must have been drilled into my brain, that the area of a circle = π r squared. Hmm, pi has to do with circles and a pie is a circle. How cool!

Some people use mnemonics to memorize sequences and I have used them myself. I still remember Every Good Boy Deserves Favour are the notes of the lines on the treble clef.

Apparently there is a practice dedicated to creating mnemonics for pi and it's called piphilology. The word is a play on the word "pi" itself and of the linguistic field of philology. The mnemonic I heard on the radio this morning was "may I have a large package of coffee" (3.1415926). Others I like are:

• how I wish I could recollect pi easily today
• how I need a drink alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics

and the best one for last

• how I wish I could enumerate pi easily, since all these bullshit mnemonics prevent recalling any of pi's sequence more simply

The whole world loves pi. This is a Czech mnemonic: Sám u sebe v hlavě magického pí číslic deset mám. (I have ten digits of magical pi in my head.)

Longer mnemonics are called piems from the word pi and poem. This piem is from the book: "Somewhen" by David Saul and Danielle Mathieson (another one for my Goodreads TR list). I like the way the text forms a circle. The word "nothing" designates "zero" which I think is brilliant.

It's a fact

A ratio immutable

Of circle round and width

Produces geometry's deepest conundrum

For as the numerals stay random

No repeat lets out its presence

Yet it forever stretches forth

Nothing to eternity.

The language to create piems is called Pilish, I'm guessing from the words pi and English and there's even a Pilish Checker where you enter your own piem and it will highlight in red the words that need correction. It will check pi up to 100,000 digits.

3.1415 is as far as I got. "Pie: I wish I could have some" doesn't work—I tested it out in Pilish Checker.