Homeschool Math Blog

This is a neat video, showing how to calculate the value of Pi using real pies (yum!). It might help your youngsters remember the definition of Pi better as they remember the visual pic of pies around the big circle and pies going across. :) Remember also that Pi day (3/14) is upon us soon...

This online visualization represents the first 4,000,000 decimals of Pi within a single image. Each unique digit of Pi corresponds to a specific color, and is rendered as a 1x1 pixel dot. You can also search for the first occurrences of any specific decimal combination.

Vi Hart: Pi Is (still) Wrong. Vi argues against Pi, and for Tau. Even if you disagree with her, I think you will enjoy the pies! And if you're not familiar with the controversy between Pi and Tau, I suggest you read http://tauday.com/ Especially take a look at these images (images by Michael Hartl from Tauday.com ) Personally, I am not taking sides! At least not for now!

π Day (Pi Day) is upon us soon (on 3/14 or March 14). If you'd like to prepare for it and have some activities for your children/students, check these resources. If your students don't yet know what Pi is, start with the basics: it is very fitting to explain what pi is on Pi Day. Here's a Pi webquest for older students who can search the Internet and encyclopedias on their own. BrainPop has a movie about Pi . Remember also that 22/7 is a great fractional approximation to Pi. This means that if 7 pepperonis nicely fit in the diameter of a pizza, then 22 nicely fit to go around. Find where your birthday is in Pi - e.g. if your birthday is March 14, 1971, find where in Pi's digits is the sequence 31471. (Mine wasn't anywhere in the digits it searched.) Then you can read Pi limericks . Lastly, here's one pi poster for your Pi Day. Hopefully that fills your "appetite" for "pi"!

Today is Pi day (3/14 or March 14) and to celebrate it, you can LISTEN to your Pi! My hubby said the music is pretty good but needs a chorus... And here are a bunch more links for celebrating Pi day ... from Let's Play Math.

This was sent to me... I thought it was a very cute, melodic song about learning circle-related terminology such as radius, diameter, and circumference, and the two formulas with Pi (area formula and circumference formula): Here's a direct link in case you want to spread it around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4SUypJZxo This is done by Dave Mitchell who also has a website Arithmecode.com .

I almost forgot...! Today is Pi Day! See, it's 3-14 (March 14) and pi ≈ 3.14. To celebrate, check some pi day activities .

Here's the answer as to how many decimal places Pi's decimal expansion has been calculated: 1,241,100,000,000 decimal digits It's more than 1 trillion digits! This was done in 2002 by Yasumasa Kanada and 9 other individuals in Tokyo. See www.super-computing.org/pi_current.html for more details on this project. Okay, and if you'd like to start memorizing it, here's a link to Pi trainer :)

Pi seems to be such a simple thing - it's just two letters, and after all, you just peek into any math book to find out its value. Everybody knows about it, "Pi? Ah, yes, they taught us that in school, so it's something pretty simple." BUT have you ever given pi some more thought? And, if you let your students give pi some more thought, it might just make math a little more interesting and 'lively' for them, too. Think thought about it - how come the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter can be an irrational number? After all, this is not something that would naturally come to mind if you've never heard of irrationals before... If you start measuring lots of circles and calculating ratios, yes, you would soon notice that in every circle the ratio is the same. You would notice it's a little over 3. But would you just GUESS on your own that this ratio isn't a rational number? If you have the time (and homeschoolers might), give...