Dear Humans,

We didn’t eat pie yesterday. Even though it was March 14th–3/14, the first three digits of pi–the mathematical constant that describes the relationship between a circle’s diameter and its circumference. (Like many things in math, it’s also a lot more than that.)

Pi is pretty neat. And the quest to discover more and more digits of pi neatly aligns with the human story of mathematical discovery. But the Egyptians were able to build the pyramids with a pretty rough approximation of pi, so that’s good enough for me.

Because math is more than just memorization. Math is thinking about patterns and relationships. Knowing in your gut the relationship between a circle’s diameter and its circumference is math; reciting digits is just a parlor trick.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt