"In short, they commuted but didn’t associate."
March 14, 2016 5:35 AM   Subscribe

Happy π Day! And do you know what that means? Math puns today! Every day! In competitions, even. Don't like puns? Try other forms of math humor (or over-explain them to businesspeople)!
posted by metaquarry (16 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
Also known as half-tau day. Teach the controversy!
posted by autopilot at 5:46 AM on March 14, 2016 [15 favorites]




It's 14.3 here. That's not pi.
posted by Pendragon at 5:59 AM on March 14, 2016 [4 favorites]


then you can just celebrate it on the third of whatever you call the fourteenth month of the year
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:08 AM on March 14, 2016 [7 favorites]


... and if you like you can round up and claim that today is 3.1416, which of course makes this π Day extra special! :)
posted by soundofsuburbia at 6:12 AM on March 14, 2016 [4 favorites]


Again, where the heck were you on February 7th, America? Or July 2nd, Europe?
posted by eriko at 6:31 AM on March 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


The list of "proof by..." in the seminar & semantics section of the Utah link (other forms of math humor) are really funny.

Q. What's purple and commutes?

Q. What's yellow and equivalent to the axiom of choice?

Q. What's yellow and equivalent to a complete normed vector space?

This is seriously the only reason I can tell you what a Banach space is.
posted by leahwrenn at 6:38 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also known as half-tau day. Teach the controversy!

Hallelujah! Here's The Tau Manifesto for those that haven't heard the news.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:45 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Q. What's green and homeomorphic to the open unit interval?
posted by egregious theorem at 8:54 AM on March 14, 2016


> whatever you call the fourteenth month of the year

Garth.
posted by lucidium at 9:24 AM on March 14, 2016


As a Bajoran who lives on a 26 hour day, today is March 7th. What are you all going on about? Oh wait, maybe this should have been posted in the Star Trek thread which is just next door to this one. Talk about nerd overload on the FP!
posted by marienbad at 9:30 AM on March 14, 2016


One nice thing about Pi Day is that it means a new Vi Hart video.
posted by Shmuel510 at 9:43 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


I explained it to my son like this:
"Today is March 14, or '3-14', pi day. Pi is an important number starting with 3.14 that is used to tell us the area of a circle. And 'pi' sounds like 'pie', which is generally circular. Which is why I am bringing this pie in to work today."

Not sure he understood anything past "Dad is bringing pie to work and I don't get any of it."
posted by caution live frogs at 10:19 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Of course, last year, you had "as close as we'll get this century to Prefect Pi" in the Pi Second: 3/14/15 9:26:53 (or :54 if you rounded up).

And a "closer to perfect Tau Day" won't happen until 2031 (or 2032 if you round up).

But I don't feel like celebrating Irrational Numbers right now. It feels like it only encourages Irrationality in other things and we have way too much of that.

(also the link to the usually annoying Business Insider was especially annoying, as 2 of its first three "math jokes" were actually about statistics and statisticians, which are quite a different thing, as anyone who, like me, has read the classic volume "How to Lie With Statistics" can tell you. I discovered this great book in the 8th grade when given an English Class assignment to 'write a book report about a non-fiction book' and it was the shortest non-fiction book in the school library... 144 pages or 12². And yet it was fascinating, funny and helped plant the seed of skepticism in my fertile young mind. But I digress.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:47 PM on March 14, 2016


Q. What's green and homeomorphic to the open unit interval?


Ooh, ooh! The real lime!!
posted by leahwrenn at 2:02 PM on March 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


I have just returned from knitting group, where people brought in FIVE pies.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:05 PM on March 14, 2016


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