The event is promoted by the XlinX Cultural Association and by Professor Giovanni Alberti of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Pisa, with the support and promotion of the Museum of Calculation Tools of the University of Pisa and of the entire University.

 

The day of the Greek Pi was celebrated for the first time on March 14th, 1988 at the Exploratorium, the famous Science Museum of San Francisco, and has since been celebrated by numerous schools, universities and scientific institutions all over the world. The same day is also the anniversary of the birth of Einstein.

 

Pi is probably the most famous mathematical constant there is: it measures the ratio between the length of a circumference and that of its diameter, whose approximate value is 3.14. Since English is often referred to as Pi ', whose pronunciation is identical to' pie '(cake), it goes without saying that' Pi-day 'is also the day of the cakes.

 

From the mathematical point of view, Pi is an interesting number: irrational (can not be obtained as a ratio of two integers) and transcendent (it can not be a solution of a polynomial equation with rational coefficients). Its development, therefore, is infinite and apparently irregular and unpredictable, even if strictly defined. Sophisticated calculation techniques have made it possible to determine (to date) over twenty-two thousand billion decimal digits of Pi.

 

On this celebrative day it will be possible to realize how man has begun to wish to calculate Pi, what unpredictable and curious aspects these calculations have brought to light and how some properties of Pi have teased the imagination to the point of generating excellent inspirations literary.