Happy Pi Day, to all our GMAT Math enthusiasts!! We here at Kaplan know you have been waiting all year for the 14th day of the 3rd month. You are not alone! We share in your excitement that the most glorious day of all annual commemorations has finally arrived. On this Day of Days, people the world over take a moment to laud the sublime ratio that irrationally but nonetheless numerically describes the relationship of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. In not so many words: π = C/d.
Fortunately for you and me, humans love a good challenge. While it is generally accepted that scientists, when calculating with π, only need to take the transcendental number out forty places to the right of the decimal, mankind has banded together over the centuries culminating in the modern use of supercomputing technology for its undoubted intended purpose. We can proudly boast that pi has been calculated out to over one trillion decimal places. Truly an achievement, but certainly not an opportunity to rest— onto two trillion we go!
We know you have big plans for Pi Day and want to hear all about them in the comments below. Here at Kaplan, we will be meeting up online to hear our own Pi King, Robert Reiss, launch into his impressive annual recitation of pi out to an astounding 3,141 places. A feat of deity-like power to be sure, but one that places him only about 29th on the official Pi World Ranking List. The top 15 recitations are all at 10,000 places or above, and the world record is held by Chinese national and god-amongst-men Chao Lu, who on November 20, 2005 spoke for twenty-four hours and four minutes to recite pi out to 67,890 places. All hail Chao Lu!
Want more? Spend hours on www.piday.org learning more and more and more about π. Also, have a look at the New York Times blogroll Numberplay wherein a recent post describes something known as The Pi Machine. (Hey, I want a hoverboard, too, but at least this thing is for real.) Both of the films Life of Pi and π are great and it looks like the yet-to-be-released 3.14… could be, well, interesting? Finally, spend some time scrolling through one million digits of pi and download one of the many pi memorization helper apps on your Android or Apple device. Happy Pi Day!
The post GMAT Math: Happy Pi Day — 3.14 appeared first on Kaplan GMAT Blog.
