Template talk:Pie

I like it! It has the appropriate XKCD techno-geek feel to it! --NCBears 16:44, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Why is there a "Pi Day" when people eat pies? The two things have nothing to do with each other, and they're not even spelled the same. Is there similarly a "delta day" when people try to get to river archipelagos? Or a "gamma day" when people expose themselves to radiation? A "mu day" when people go round pretending to be cows? I just don't get it, sorry. -- Benjw 18:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

It is obviously not about greek letters. There is a set of people who likes the number pi (including certain users of this wiki, I assume), and a set of people who like tasty pies. Since the set union is fairly large, it is manifest to celebrate both on the same day. -- relet 18:42, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

If those other Greek letters had numbers associated with them, there probably would be. The idea of Pi day is that in the American date notation, 3.14 or "three one four" corresponds to 3/14 or March 14th. Having determined that this is Pi day, the question then becomes how do you celebrate Pi day? With circles and round things like the homophonous pie? In short it isn't π = pie --> let's eat celebrate. It's π ~= 3.14 --> let's celebrate with something that is appropriately shaped and named. You could also ride horses with irregularly-shaped black patches, read works by a former poet laureate of England, or throw coins and try to not have them land on parallel lines (pi turns up in the equation governing the probability that they will, assuming your aim is poor enough to be considered random chance). -Robyn 18:45, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

But why bother 'celebrating' pi? It's just a number. A fairly useful one, yes, but I bet that most people who eat pies and think lovingly about 3.14 (a) don't actually know what pi is useful for, beyond "something to do with circles", and (b) can't go any further than "three point one four, um, er". [I'd better acknowledge here that users of this wiki are probably slightly more educated than the general public in this matter.] -- Benjw 18:51, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Hey, here's an idea. Let's have an "e day", when we all celebrate the fabulous number e, which is a lot more useful than pi when you do a lot of stuff involving calculus (which I do, unfortunately). We can all go round reciting "two point seven one er dunno the rest" and talking like Yorkshiremen ("eeeeee, when I were a lad, this were all fields..."). We can have it on 7 February. Any takers? -- Benjw 18:53, 13 March 2009 (UTC)