Math Meets Dessert: 3/14 Is Pi Day | NBC Southern California

Math Meets Dessert: 3/14 Is Pi Day

Math gets the love on March 14, but so do baked treats across town.


    Pi day is March 14, which means number love, yes, and sugary treats.

    Perhaps the only the most professional and daring of bakers never uncupboard their measuring cups, but most of do, especially when a perfectly moist dough, and all of its ingredients, are on the table.

    Which means this: Math and pie go way back. You wouldn't fold 197 apples inside a crust but you would count out three or four. Numbers and nom-nom-ing are old friends.

    So it doesn't surprise us, nor should it alarm anyone, really, that March 14 is Pi Day, and, in turn, Pie Day. The March 14 part makes sense -- 3/14 is the date, and 3.14 is the very start of pi -- and, yes, Pie Day already has its official holiday on Jan. 23.

    But that hasn't stopped math mavens, yuksters, lovers of hot fruit filing, and general calendar-minded merrymakers from combining pie and pi every March 14.

    On the pie side? Well, choices abound. We have a theory that, at any hour of the day, someone is sitting in some Naughahyde booth, somewhere in LA, eating a piece of pie. What? Our region and the foodstuff are practically synonymous.

    On the newer side of the fence you have The Pie Hole, Simple Things, and Republic of Pie. The long-baking classics include Du-Par's and The Apple Pan.

    But if you lean mathward on March 14, take inspiration: Students at Robert A. Milliken Middle School in Sherman Oaks participate in a number of pi-nice competitions including, wait for it, the recitation of the numbers that make up pi. "Last year's winner was able to recite over 700 numbers," which is, truly, beyond amazing.

    Someone buy that kid a pie!
