Pi(e) Day!

Question 1

What school has sent out applicant decisions on Pi Day?

Accepted Answer

MIT

Question 2

Pi Day shares a birthday with which famous person?

Accepted Answer

Albert Einstein

Question 3

What is the "formal" definition of pi?

Accepted Answer

the radius of a circle

Question 4

Who, in 1706, first gave the Greek letter "pi" its current mathematical definition?

Accepted Answer

William Jones

Question 5

Pi is transcendental. What does this mean?

Accepted Answer

It can't be expressed as an integer or a root or quotient

Question 6

What is the earliest known reference to pi in history?

Accepted Answer

A Egyptian papyrus scroll, written approx. 1650 BC

Question 7

Pi is also referred to as

Accepted Answer

circular constant

Question 8

Does Pi's numbers ever repeat themselves in any pattern?

Accepted Answer

No. Every periodic number is rational, but pi is irrational

Question 9

Some people became deranged when trying to square the circle, what was the illness named?

Accepted Answer

Morbus Cyclometricus

Question 10

People tried for centuries to "square the circle". What were they trying to do?

Accepted Answer

Creating a square perfectly equal to the given circle's area

Question 11

What popular TV show featured pi in an episode as the solution to stopping a serial killer?

Accepted Answer

Star Trek

Question 12

Pi is an irrational number. What does that really mean?

Accepted Answer

It's a real number, but can't be a ratio of two integers

Question 13

What is the current world record for memorization of the decimal places of pi?

Accepted Answer

42,000 places, by Hiroyuki Goto

Question 14

How many hours did it take a supercomputer to calculate pi to 51.5 billion digits, in 1997?

Accepted Answer

29 hours

Question 15

What is the 40,000th decimal place of pi?

Accepted Answer

1

Questions 15