Pi Mnemonic

from Michael Keith: Circle Digits — A Self-Referential Story

Happy π Day!

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Pumpkin Pi

see more Funny Graphs

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Happy ∏ Day!

click on the graphic to view it full size in a new window

It's been a rough day in New Hampshire. We lost power most of the day on Saturday because of this big Nor'easter that is going on to the south of us. And today's rain/sleet/ice/snow/wind storm has been wreaking havoc on the Internet connection. Weather like this chills your bones. So I'm making pot roast, watching movies and doing laundry to pass the time while I upload and post material.

I forgot about ∏ Day until this morning (as I also missed church because I never fixed the clocks last night). On this ∏ Day I am presenting an Excel graphing activity I use with older middle school students. All students seem to have a problem grasping the concept that ∏ is a non-repeating, non-terminating decimal. They have an even more difficult time understanding that all of the digits 0-9 occur with the same frequency. Before we do this activity, my students already have a lot of experience with counting occurrences of heads and tails and counting the outcomes of rolling a die. They also have learned how to record their results in a spreadsheet.

I then demonstrate how they can use an Excel spreadsheet to simulate the roll of a die or the toss of a coin and how to count the outcomes using the COUNT function and other formulas. They also learn how to import raw data of a comma- or space-delineated file into Excel.

With all of these new skills, my students are then able to use Excel to count the occurrences of each digit in the decimal portion of ∏, whether it is 1,000 digits or 1 million digits. I encourage them to import different amounts of data. Then they compute the probability of each digit occurring in ∏ and find that the more digits of ∏ that they use, the closer the probabilities of each digit appearing approach 10%. This result is similar to their coin toss experiments.

It took several hours, but I have uploaded the files to my static web pages at meeyauw's hideout. I even included a file that contains the first million digits of ∏. You can study the formulas used in the spreadsheets and see the graphs we created. The graphic above used 10,000 digits of ∏ to find that the probabilities of a digit appearing in the decimal portion of ∏ approach or are at 10%.

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Below is my playlist of ∏ Day videos from YouTube. I haven't seen most of them because of the Internet problems.

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My last Pi Day contribution today is the ever so much fun site, the Pi Search Page. When students have done their spreadsheets and charts, they are encouraged to play with this site. Hopefully this site reinforces the concepts that I want them to understand. Today I entered the Apple Computer Store telephone number (1-800-MY-APPLE or 1-800-692-7753). There was no result when I entered the entire phone number. But when I entered 6927753, the results were:

The string 6927753 occurs at position 24,791,273 counting from the first digit after the decimal point. The 3. is not counted.

The string and surrounding digits:
51437113655565872488 6927753 92233691772360083137
this query took 0.007674 seconds

HAPPY PI DAY!

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Teacher Potluck Carnival: The Pi Day Edition

Welcome to the Irrational Teacher Potluck Carnival for Pi Day 2008!

Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day are two holidays held to celebrate the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (3/14 in American date format), due to π being equal to roughly 3.14. Sometimes it is celebrated on March 14 at 1:59 p.m. (commonly known as Pi Minute). If π is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m., Pi Second (or sometimes March 14, 1592 at 6:53:58 a.m.). Pi Approximation Day may be observed on any of several dates, most often July 22 (22/7 (European date format) is a popular approximation of π). March 14 also happens to be Albert Einstein's birthday.

The first Pi Day celebration was held at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988, with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, and then consuming fruit pies; the museum has since added pizza pies to its Pi Day menu.[1] The founder of Pi Day, the "Prince of Pi", is Larry Shaw,[2] now retired from the Exploratorium, but still helping out with the celebrations. They have also recently added the first Pi Day celebrations in Second Life.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology often mails out its acceptance letters to be delivered to prospective students on Pi Day.

See Wikipedia, Pi Day, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day (as of Mar. 14, 2008, 00:26 GMT).

Tomorrow we are celebrating ∏ Day with our ∏ Memorization Contest, a ∏ Day Sudoku, and, of course, pies! Chocolate pudding pie seems to be the kids' favorite, with blueberry and pumpkin coming in second.

But don't worry! Our recipes and education links are very rational. In fact, at least one is green for St. Patrick's Day. All our recipes are circular. Happy Pi Day!

FOOD

Let's start off with St. Pat's Pistachio Cookies. I got this recipe from my weekly mailing from King Arthur Flour. You get green cookies, which is fun! They suggest you use the Jell-o brand of Pistachio pudding for the best color.

I spent this past Saturday making my Apple Crumble Pie from cooks.com. I love pies. They are my favorite breakfast food. But making them? A mess! The crust I make is terrific but makes me too tense. Luckily, our store in the village now has a local frozen organic pie crust available. Amy has used two shells for a two crust pie. Still too much work for me. This apple pie has an easy crumble topping that works beautifully just as the recipe says it will. The crumble topping feels skimpy but trust the recipe and it will work. I love the sheen that the raw apples have with the flour and lemon water mixture. The last photo is of the first piece of pie from the pie tin. The flour and lemon juice mixture made a beautiful gel that was completely natural. Click on the image to see it full size.

Finally, my Amy has granted me permission to publish her "perfected" chocolate chip cookies. What does "perfected" mean? I don't get anymore cookies because she has no need to further test her recipe. She is in search of another recipe to perfect. It had better be something chocolate. Sorry, no photos. I ate the cookies.

2 sticks unsalted butter
2 cups flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (or just use all regular flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
about 2 cups of toasted walnuts or pecans

Hardware:
Ice cream scooper (#20 disher, to be exact)
Parchment paper
Baking sheets
Mixer

Heat oven to 375° F.
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom medium saucepan over low heat. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.
Pour the melted butter in the mixer's work bowl. Add the sugar and brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugars on medium speed. Add the egg, yolk, 2 tablespoons milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined.
Stir in the chocolate chips and nuts.
Chill the dough, (I did not do this.)

Scoop cookie onto parchment-lined baking sheets, 6 cookies per sheet. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown, checking the cookies after 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet for even browning. Cool completely and store in an airtight container.

EDUCATION

Jean Mosher presents More American Children Educated Online posted at Always in Motion. I read the article and it raises important questions about public funding, for-profit educational corporations, credentials and regulation. We have to be aware of the issues because they could affect us sooner than we know.

With that in mind, consider Mark Monaghan's post The need for eLearning posted at eLearning. If you have not seen this video, you must. It will put the eLearning debate into focus.

Despite a district-wide rule prohibiting cell phones in our schools, students have them. Cell phones have audio, still photo and video capabilities. What would you do if suddenly you appeared on YouTube in a cell phone video? Greg Laden presents Greg Laden's Blog : Teachers Gone Wild posted at Greg Laden's Blog. I think this is another article that you must read.

Are you planning on buying pronunciation software for your students? Eric Koshinsky presents Pronunciation Software to Improve English Pronunciation posted at Teachers Call. There are more criteria to consider than I had ever realized.

That's it for this edition of the Potluck Carnival. Please submit your recipe, story or article for the next carnival here.

HAPPY PI DAY!

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Teacher Potluck Carnival

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