Look, I know usually on Pi day I get all angry about how Pi is a terrible poser of a number
that gets too much undeserved attention from screaming fans who don’t seem to realize
that PI IS THE LITERAL WORST—
but manufactured outrage aside, we have bigger problems this year.
Sure many mathematicians agree that Pi is wrong, Tau is the beautiful number that speaks
naturally to circles and waves, but we can’t change the past.
Pi might not be the number we want, but it’s the number we got, and perhaps it’s the
number we deserve…
So, fine, last year’s Pi Day was 3/14/15, that’s 5 entire digits of pi which of course
only happens once a century so I can understand people being excited.
But what upsets me is that there is no such excitement for this year’s pi day, even
though 3/14/16 is actually much closer to Pi.
And I mean Much closer… the next digit is a 9, which is a pretty… significant difference.
Some would say it’s better to keep that dangling 5, a suggestion of possible continuation
unto the infinite.
For if you have 5, to avoid rounding up you MUST continue on to 9, but even then, you
can’t stop there for what if the next digit is also a nine?
But no, it’s a 2!
But once we have 2, what if it actually rounds to 3?
It does!
But we don’t want to have to change our 3, so we basically HAVE to continue past that
6, and so on and so forth until all these hypotheticals create the ideal and perfect
Pi in its entirety, forgetting that no matter what you may imagine should come after, you’re
still stuck with the reality that all you have is 3.1415, which may represent Pi in
your head, but it is not pi, and while 3.1416 isn’t pi either, it’s much closer, it’s
more useful in every practical sense, without the pretension of being something it’s not.
People would rather have something that looks more like pi than something that is more like
pi.
Equality used to mean something, something more than the keeping up of appearances, of
paying lip service to every digit that you do show, rather than say:
“Look, here is my rounded-up final digit.
You’ve all seen it, and I know it isn’t the digit that you wanted.
I wish it could be a 5 followed by a 9 but I can't time travel to the year 1592 and bring
you back those glorious digits and I’m not going to pretend that I can.
And so I offer you this humble 6, a 6 that we can have, right here, right now, if only
you will join me in embracing practical truth over a nostalgia for something you never even
had, there has never been a Pi Day and there never will be a Pi Day, but this, this approximation,
good down to less than one one-hundred-thousandth place, this we can do.”
“Together!”
But why not keep that 5 as a five if it makes people happy and gives dignity to a number
that is slowly slipping from its place as #1 cool math symbol?
What harm could it do?
If we admit that even Pi needs to be rounded sometimes, that it’s not above the laws
of mathematics, we might lose something far worse than just almost an entire significant
digit’s worth of accuracy, we lose a piece of mathematical culture, we pull an icon down
from its pedestal and are forced to confront the fact that it’s just a number.
A sad, desperate number that will only ever be half the number it should be, a number
that shoulders the burden of hope for every mathematician who dreams of being seen by
our culture as more than just shufflers of numbers, we crave a symbol that captures the
peculiar beauty of mathematics, the spirit of the infinite and the unknown, and this
symbol becomes untouchable, even when it’s like an entire 9 hundred-thousandths off from
what it represents;
Come on, Sheeple!
Anyway, I know we have our differences, but remember we’re still 99.999% the same, so
I hope you’ll join me in reaching across the aisle to wish a happy Pi Day even to those
you disagree with.
Or if not a happy Pi Day, at least a practical pi day.
And I will see you next year, for…
Pi Day with a 7 on the end.