Letter to Pi Day

Celebrate Pi Day with a heartfelt letter that pays tribute to the power and beauty of numbers. This year’s Pi Day video by the beloved mathematician Vi Hart is a fitting tribute to the unceasing and stubborn nature of mathematics. Through the lens of Pi Day, the author reflects on the importance of numbers in our lives, from the clock on our phones to the calculations that allow us to grow food and create medicine. But numbers can also be used for harm, leading to the question of whether we truly deserve Pi Day. The author assures us that, despite the darkness that can exist in the world, the good that people do is innumerable and often goes unnoticed. Join us in celebrating Pi Day and embrace the power and potential of numbers.

An Ode

THIS YEAR, like every year past time immemorial, the recreational mathematician and generally beloved Vi Hart released their annual **Pi Day** video.

As usual, I felt moved by it — with this year’s material being composed (no pun intended) of improvised solo piano based on the digits of π itself. I decided to just reflect, using this arbitrary, geeky mathematical holiday as a vehicle for my thoughts. My apologies for being late, and yes, *****leap years *do *exist.

This year, I’m feeling grateful for Pi Day. I am so grateful that March 14th is relentlessly unceasing. No matter how much tragedy begets us, the numbers are still there. Etched out fixed points, permanent in place. These numbers shimmer like the Northern Star, impossible to make flinch or doubt.

Well okay, sort of, I mean. March 14th, in spite of happening exactly every 365 days*, is an arbitrary concept that doesn’t exist outside the human mind’s Gregorian calendar. Thanks Greg.

So, there is one thing needed to continue Pi Day onward: us. People.

And I am so grateful that the only thing more stubborn than our tragedy is us ourselves. No matter what happens, no matter what is lost, no matter the pain: we continue. It may take awhile, it may be incredibly difficult, but life goes on. The world shuts down but life goes on. Our minds become overcast fog and we forget what day of the week it is, what month it is, what year it is.

But just look at the clock. Look at your phone. It’s right there, still. The numbers will gently remind you, and set you back straight into reality, even if it’s just a little bit. The beautiful and stubborn mechanics that let you know if it’s the weekend, and that also allow for the physical universe to even exist at all.

And it’s true, how strange it is to be anything at all. To be launched into this world, a squishy mostly-hairless bipedal ape. So impossibly vulnerable compared to the rest of creatures that have existed millions of years before we have, and maybe after we have too. But regardless, we have something they don’t: the numbers. March 14th. Pi Day. Oh, and thumbs.

And we use these numbers, don’t we? To figure out how to farm enough food for everyone, to create medicine to heal, to count out the syllables in the awkward love poems we try out best to write.

But also to make weapons, to chemically engineer the most destructive forces possible, to calculate necessities to carry out criminal acts, to ruin untouched land and innocence.

It can feel, at times, that maybe we don’t deserve Pi Day. We don’t deserve the numbers. That we’ve done more harm than good with them. But I assure you, no, I plead with you that isn’t the case.

When you do something right, people often think you haven’t done anything at all. It’s so easy to see the bad when it happens, because it sticks out so sorely. But the good? The good happens so often, and is often too humble to make itself known, most of the time. So many good acts taken for granted, and even more good people.

There are times when that’s hard to believe, I know. Probably many times, but I promise you it’s true.

Okay, one last thing I have to admit: The numbers aren’t actually perfect.

Why?

Because the amount of lives you’ve affected is innumerable. The amount of joy you’ve made, just by being, is countless.

So, anyways, that’s enough out of me. Happy Pi Day.

P.S. Tau is still better.

About B. Kenneth Brown