March 14th National Pi Day

It is fitting we should celebrate the number 3.14 on 3/14. Now, beyond the fact that 3.14 is a number that never ends, why is that important? well, I don;t think anyone can exactly say. It was discovered by Albert Einstein who must not have had anything terribly important to do that day since it really leads to nowhere, though a lot of science does often lead to more questions than it answers.Anyway, The U.S. House made a non-binding resolution concerning Pi… no one knows why, if it’s non-binding what does it mean? So finally Larry Shaw created Pi Day in 1989.

How to celebrate – Celebrate Albert Einstein. Try to figure out Pi. Try to figure out why Pi matters!

Advertisement

November 23rd Fibonacci Day

Fibonacci Day will take you for a whirl; the Fibonacci sequence is a mathematical concept found in everything from architectural wonders, the biological cells of leaves, and the greatest works of art. Leonardo Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician who lived in the twelfth century, used the pairings of bunnies as an example of the phenomenon. Simply, you add two numbers together that have already appeared in the sequence to find the next number. You begin with 0 and 1, naturally. Add them together and you get 1. Well, we didn’t get very far there but in due time, things change exponentially. So we continue: 1 + 1 results in 2. From there, week working with the last two numbers. For example: 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 =5, 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13, 8 + 13 = 14, and so on and so forth until infinity! What’s cool about the sequence is that it appears in the Golden Ratio, the so-called beautifier of the universe. The Golden Ratio looks like a nautilus shell, starting from a very tiny spiral center and it expands outward to form a beautiful, ovular design. This ratio is found in things like the design of the Mona Lisa, the Greek Parthenon – a temple in Greece, snowflakes at the atomic level, and even our faces and bodies! Fibonacci Day is a day to examine the beauty in things great and small, and to remember that math can be fun!

How to celebrate – Learn the Fibonacci way of counting. Look for patterns in seashells. Look for beauty where you find it.