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Pi Day Spotlights One of Math's Most Seductive Numbers

Someone has memorized 70,000 digits of pi's decimal expansion

It may seem irrational to some, but we celebrate the number pi (π) every year on March 14, since 3/14 represent the first three digits of pi's decimal expansion.

NBC News reports that pi is more than just a good excuse to eat pie in the middle of March. It characterizes the perfect circle in a Platonic world, because it represents the constant ratio of the circumference to the diameter.

But it does more than that, too. Pi is part of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and a formula that prices risk.

It's captured the popular imagination with its irrationality, which means it can't be represented as a fraction. A computer calculated pi down to the 22,459,157,718,361st decimal place, while Rajveer Meena from India has a Guinness Book world record for reciting 70,000 of those decimal places.

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