Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. It’s shocking to see how so many people still believe that he did. The real inventor was in fact James Bowman Lindsay, almost 50 years earlier.
Edison is generally thought of as the inventor because he experimented and found a longer-lasting filament. And Edison, it must be said, invented or developed all of the switches, transformers and other components necessary to create a system of electric lighting that anyone could use.
A similar thing happened with an invention of mine. On March 14, 1983, my friend David Burdelski and I noticed that the date, written numerically in North American format as 3/14, was a representation of the number pi (3.14…). Pi is one of the most important numbers in mathematics; it enables a relationship between things that are straight or rectangular and things that are round or elliptical.
The tradition of Pi Day was born
We were in school at the time, so we were able to animate a number of our fellow pupils, who were familiar with pi, to celebrate this. We gathered our circle of friends and shared round foods, like pizza, dividing them along straight lines into perfect slices. The tradition of Pi Day was born. When our friends went away to college, they took this tradition with them to other parts of the country and even abroad.
But instead of remembering us for creating this worldwide phenomenon, newspaper reporters in the 1990s interviewed a museum curator in San Francisco, a schoolteacher in Michigan, and others. It didn’t matter that their claims came several years after ours. The difference between them and us was that they organized activities for strangers: a group performance of songs about pi, a pie-eating contest, and other things that David and I would have done if we hadn’t been in college thinking that we would soon invent something of real significance.
The Pi Room at the Mathematikum in Gießen. Photo: Mike Pilewski
Why pi?
What these impostors have in common with us are the aims of Pi Day, which are to promote togetherness and mathematical awareness. We live in a world of numbers, yet most people have no relationship to numbers. In fact, they go to great lengths to avoid any such relationship. But numbers are just words in a different language — a perfect language, the language of mathematics. Could you imagine not being able to read and write well? Innumeracy is just as bad as illiteracy.
Numbers control our identity. They can even save our lives. My first realization of this was when my mother sent me off to school at the age of six. Although we lived around the corner, she had me memorize our home phone number. “If anything happens to you, have someone call this number and we’ll get you,” she said. I repeated the seven digits over and over to myself; my life depended on it!
Numbers control our identity and can save lives
Numbers, or combinations of letters and numbers, control our access to money (ATMs), communication (e-mail), and sometimes even security (alarm systems). I’ve written about how one number can even control access to our identity. A lot of people struggle with their basic household finances and have no hope of understanding critical decisions that involve taxes, budgets, debt and interest.
The first step is for everyone to accept numbers into their lives. Some numbers are special: birthdays, for example; also prime numbers, round numbers, the decimals of certain fractions, and so on. If enough numbers are special to you, you’ll remember them when you see them again in a random combination.
That’s how I memorized the value of pi to 500 decimal places when I was in high school. What seemed like a jumble of digits was, to me, an epic poem (with a certain rhythm to it) about familiar characters. Numbers are like words or songs, and pi is the grandest song of all.
Today’s Google doodle illustrates the 101st birthday of a Japanese origami master. Perhaps for next year, when it’s actually a round anniversary, someone could design a 30th anniversary Pi Day doodle. Wouldn’t that be something? I just hope they give credit where it’s due.
