Tom 7 Radar: Pi day... awesome!

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Pi day... awesome! (14 Mar 2005 at 12:09)

Happy Pi Day (3/14), everyone!

Back in 1999, when I was an undergraduate, my math friend Dan Bruner and I decided that an appropriate Pi Day celebration would be to write as many digits of pi as we could on the sidewalk for everyone to see. We used really big digits and didn't have very much chalk, but we wrote about 888 (going from Wean Hall to the University Center) starting at 1:59AM, with our fingers freezing and our lungs wheezing at the end. In the following years we did the same, with more and more volunteers (once, our work was snowed on before daybreak!), each year doubling the amount of digits that we wrote, and also starting a bit earlier in the night and writing smaller. (Dan eventually graduated but I'm still here as a PhD student.) In 2003 we got 8192 digits with the help of about 20 people, which I thought of as the pinnacle of pi writing. When CMU moved its spring break to overlap Pi Day in 2004, and with most of my undergraduate friends graduated and most of my graduate friends working on their theses, I thought that would be the end of our chalking exploits.

Paragraph break for emphasis. I was wrong. Today I walked into campus to find that a group of CMU Pi Ninjas had picked up the disused torch, dusted it off, and carried on the tradition with aplomb; they had doubled our previous total to 16,384 digits!! I walked the entire route grinning. Fucking great job, guys. I am impressed, honored, and absolutely ready to have pi day chalking be an autonomous CMU tradition. Pi lives!!

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FARINA00 (host226-98.pool8536.interbusiness.it) – 03.14.05 13:08:58

PIctures!

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ndm (c-67-165-67-55.client.comcast.net) – 03.14.05 14:00:00

yeah, where's the pics?

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Tadbot (pcp0010451887pcs.walngs01.pa.comcast.net) – 03.14.05 14:01:55

r0x. A nice Π party. Celebrate it yearly. Smath can visit annually.
Aronofsky, Darren's cinematic Max vs Ant arthouse film - supply it!
Anyway, how's Dan now? Nerdcore job or working 9-5?

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Tadbot (pcp0010451887pcs.walngs01.pa.comcast.net) – 03.14.05 14:12:17

Dave put a couple pix at http://vaxcave.com/index.php?p=314

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Mike Nolan (207.160.210.253) – 03.14.05 16:33:46

I don't guess the doubling pattern can continue indefinitely though, unless the people there are <i>really</i> amazing, though.

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Tom 7 (h-68-166-177-37.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 03.14.05 19:24:26

No indeed. ;)
But maybe it can last until I graduate...

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Alice (mail.app.aconex.com) – 03.15.05 22:55:59

Here in Australia, where we write dates as dd/MM, pi approximation day is the 22nd of July.

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Alice (mail.app.aconex.com) – 03.15.05 23:04:30

Here in Australia, where we write dates as dd/MM, pi approximation day is the 22nd of July.

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Hock (sleepy.cs.wisc.edu) – 03.16.05 13:30:03

You made metafilter again:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/40453

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Tom 7 (gs82.sp.cs.cmu.edu) – 03.16.05 17:08:54

I saw -- I noticed a sudden up-tick in the number of e-mails from strangers and knew something must have been cookin'!

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Anonymous (pool-72-80-176-18.nycmny.fios.verizon.net) – 08.08.06 16:55:51

pi is awesome!

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philosopher-animal (bas3-montreal02-1096690622.dsl.bell.ca) – 01.20.07 22:17:11

I was a student a few years back at CMU and remember pi day with fondness. Keep up the good work!

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Anonymous (24.62.73.189) – 05.25.22 17:19:40

OOOOOOOh

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