Holiday: Happy Pi Day

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Happy Pi Day! Yes, the United States Congress has seen fit to declare March 14th Pi Day, after the number pi (π) that is the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle in Euclidean space. Indeed, the United States is basically the only country in which this would even make sense, where the common nomenclature for March 14th (3/14) resembles the first few digits of Pi (3.14...); most of the rest of the world views this date as 14/3.

The day of celebration of a mathematical constant seems an appropriate day to recount the story of when I knew that I was not a mathematician. For most people in the United States, that's probably the day they were born (or at least the first day in class when they were confused by a math problem), but for me it came as a freshman in high school. There actually might have been some reason to believe I might be a mathematician, as I had been an active member of the math club in middle school and in fact had won a trip to the national Mathcounts in the eight grade.

I had many good math teachers and professors over the years, but clearly one of the best was my pre-calculus and calculus teacher in high school, Richard Beishline. He clearly loved math, and loved teaching math. Between his passion and his practice of keeping a stash of Tootsie Rolls around to reward good questions and good performance, he was a very popular instructor.

One day, Mr. Beishline wrote the equation e^iπ=-1 on the backboard. The famous equation, sometimes called Euler's Identity, relates three fundamental constants in a very elegant form. After writing it, Mr. Beishline just stared at it, clearly admiring its beauty. I was completely unimpressed, despite never have really thought about the identity before.

To me, π, e, and i were all things that were defined by human beings, even if they had significance in nature. If they were defined by human beings, then why shouldn't there be some relation between them. That the relation was so simple might be surprising, but that some relation existed seemed unremarkable to me. In that instant, seeing how the real mathematician, Richard Beishline, was able to admire an equation that he had probably seen hundreds of times and it couldn't hold my admiration for even a single interaction, I knew I must not be a mathematician.

I need to quit writing now as I have a sweet potato pie in the oven--I didn't really make it because it was Pi Day, but because the St. Patrick's Day Parade is tomorrow in Toronto, and I traditionally prepare a sweet potato pie for St. Patrick's Day dinner. That it worked out that way this year was a complete coincidence.