Celebrating Pi Day with Duke Mathematicians

Pi Day photo: D/pi. also equations using pi

Pi Day presents a special opportunity to eat pie and talk about favorite equations and other mathematical uses of Pi. Here's three examples from previous years showcasing Duke faculty discussing why this irrational number is essential to making the world around us seem more rational.

Jonathan Mattingly and other math professors share what Pi means to them. (2019)

Ingrid Daubechies, the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke, talks math while she makes special Pi Day cookies.

Ingrid Daubechies received a blue Pi award for her service as judge for a Pi Day competition she started at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. (Video, 2022)

In 2017, we got out some compasses and conjured this geometric illusion. The revolving disc is called a phenakistoscope (also sometimes identified as a zoetrope) -- a type of circular moving art from the dawn of animation and cinema.

A picture disc for Pi Day (2017)