What Does Pi Day REALLY Celebrate?

March 14 is called pi day (3.14), but what does pi day really celebrate?

MATHEMATICS and SCIENCE

or the

IRRATIONAL?

Pi is an irrational number (3.1415926535...) with no finite or repeatable decimal expansion. Rounding off to 3.14 is a kludge violating the mystique of pi. It is not poetic. Let’s be more romantic, and calculate the pi MOMENT!

Scaling the .0015926535... remainder to the 24 hour day indicates that the pi moment is somewhere between 3 hours, 49 minutes, and 20-21 seconds AM. But you must add one hour for the artifact of daylight savings time, and a fudge factor of up to one hour to account for your location east or west on the time zone grid.

There, we are better-centered about the moment.

But still, how satisfying to the

SOUL?

Everyone has one, even Squares. That is, even analytical, scientific, rational-reductionist types. But never forget: the root of analytical is anal, and Circles have more Soul!

Science and mathematics are about the rational; order; measure; reason; delineation; articulation; what ancient Greeks characterized as the Apollonian.

How different from the Greek Dionysian and the Oriental Tao...

The ineffable

That which cannot be said, but ‘merely’ felt

The 
IRRATIONAL!

This is what I celebrate on Pi Day!

Technical Note on Calculating the Pi Moment

Different people might calculate the pi moment differently. Some use the year, as in 3/14/15, but this is incorrect to my mind, because years are not cyclical, as is the calendar, and pi and time are all about circles and cycles. Others use Greenwich time, but that is a relic of British Imperialism; only 1/24^th of the world's time coincides with that time. Your pi moment should reflect your actual here and now moment, which is different throughout the world.

So in case you wonder why my calculation is different from others’ you need wonder no more:

My Calculations

Since 3.14 indicates the very first moment of March 14, 3.15 must indicate the very first moment of March 15.

The span between these two moments is 24 hours, which must be scaled over the difference between 3.14 and 3.15; i.e., over 0.01.

The actual trajectory of pi beyond the first moment of 3.14 is 15.926535.... percent [very close to 16%] of the 0.01 distance between 3.14 and 3.15.

Expressed on the scale of 24 hours per day, 16% of 24 hours is a little less than 4 hours.

So the pi moment must be just a little before 4:00AM wherever you are, except for relatively small corrections accounting for daylight savings time and your precise location within your regional time zone.