I’m overthinking about Pi Day.
Of course, I learned about 3.141592somethingorother in school. Being the mathematical non-genius that I am, I have had very little to do with pi outside of my academic career. My dad loved to ask me about what I was learning in school during those years, so I kept at least one equation using pi in the back of my mind all the time.
Father Dearest: What’s the formula for the area of a circle?
Me: Umm…I’m pretty sure it’s pi-r-squared.
Father Dearest: No. Pie aren’t square. Pie are round. (Grin.)
(You can see where I get my senseless of humor.)
I didn’t think too much about the connection between the two until a student brought me a gift a few years back on March 14. You know, 3/14.
It wasn’t until recently, though, that I really stopped to consider something.
Do they call it “pie” because pies are round, thus making the use of pi more relevant? Or am I overthinking this as usual?
The etymology is quite interesting. Upon performing a little informal research, I found that the word “pie,” while it referred to meat or fish enclosed in pastry, could also be associated somehow with the magpie and its nesting habits of collecting miscellaneous objects and that’s when I started to trail off in my research and wound up watching YouTube videos of pie recipes because I never learned much beyond figuring out the area of a circle using the formula that my dad would later use as a way to make me groan about his deliberate grammatical mistake the way all teenagers do when an adult tries to tell a joke and…you know, I’m always more excited for Fri Day than Pi Day, but that’s beside the point.
I’m just gonna go get myself a pizza pie. With pepperoni. More round objects…on top of a round object. Sheesh, why don’t they just call it pi-peroni? (Overthinking…I know…)
