"math" news and stories

It's March 14 - 3/14 - which, as all you Mathletes know, means it's Pi Day! Yes, once again the celebration of the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's diameter is upon us. Let's all give it up for 3.14159265...!

For those of us without the extra gig of memory in our brains for the big pi-reciting contest, we can always bake a pi pie, such as the lovely cherry example above from Megpi at Flickr (note that a few numbers are backwards). Do a Google image search for "pi pie" to see many, many more.

Enjoy your pie while listening to the Pi Song.

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This is a pie that should have been part of our nut themed day yesterday. It is also a pie that should be a hit with math-lovers, food hackers and anyone who really likes pie. This is a fractal pecan pie.

A fractal is a recursive, self-similar geometric object that continuously reproduces into proportionally smaller shapes. This particular one is based on the Koch snowflake, which is made up of triangles. To put this all into layman's terms, these guys made a giant pecan pie that used the same amount of filling that would ordinarily be found in 21 normal-sized pecan pies. The ratio of crust to filling was the same as a standard pie, so the baking time was only a bit longer than average, despite the fact that it had to be done in a custom-built, propane-powered oven. Just make sure that you have enough volunteers to help you eat all the pie (and construct the tin and oven) before baking!

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Today, March 14th, is Pi(e) day. Why pi(e)? 3-14 is the date that happens to correspond to the mathematical number pi. A slashfoodie (or a math geek) does not need to look beyond the fact that "pi" sounds just like "pie" to get a craving for a slice of crisp, sweet pie. The two terms are combined to make Pi(e) Day and to give everyone an excuse to have an extra slice of pie for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Of course, the creator of the Pi Apple Pie pictured here may have taken the concept to an extreme, but it is a delicious and amazing dessert all the same.

The folks at MathWorld have an entry for the McNugget Number, which are the integers that can be expressed as multiples (or linear combinations) of the denominations of McNugget orders. I personally find this kind of recreational mathematics to be quite amusing, especially when it deals with food. Originally, the McNugget's could only be ordered in boxes of 6, 9, and 20. This yielded many numbers of McNuggets to be impossible to obtain. But, now the selections have been expanded to 4, 6, 9, and 20, which makes it possible to get more integer numbers of McNuggets. You know, for those moments when you must need 22 McNuggets, no more, no less.

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