News from the world of maths

Write the date March 14th in the date format used in the US and you get 3.14 — which makes it Pi Day! Plus is celebrating by reflecting on the ubiquitous usefulness of this number to mathematics, pondering its many unsolved mysteries, and of course eating an appropriately shaped pi pie (pie are squared you know). How will you be celebrating? If reciting digits of pi is to be your pi party trick, then make sure you read Remembrance of numbers past from issue 31.

"If a billion decimals of pi were printed in ordinary type, they would stretch from New York City to the middle of Kansas. Only fortyseven decimal places of pi would be sufficiently precise to inscribe a circle around the visible universe that didn't deviate from perfect circularity by more than the distance across a single proton."
- from The Riciculously Enhanced Pi Page