Pi Day may be officially observed on March 14 (because pi's first three digits are 3.14), but our RDS celebrations came a few days earlier this year to coincide with our Wednesday assembly. This year's Pi Day festivities focused around the theme of "Pi and Music" with an awesome acoustic performance of "Mathematical Pi" performed by eighth-grade girls and a fantastic composition by our own music teacher Mark Bernfield using the order of digits of pi as a basis for its tonal arrangement.

"Pi is first introduced in lower school math, when students learn about mathematicalpithe relationships between circumference and diameter of circles," explains Jim Rendle, seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher. "It then pops up a lot in seventh-grade math, where students have been working intensely with pi for a couple of months. As an irrational number with a non-repeating decimal sequence, it's a mathematical anomaly and yet a fundamental building block in key formulas that describe the physical world. Computer scientists are now a trillion digits deeps into pi and haven't found a repeat yet -- and that's just fascinating for students."

The first Pi Day celebration was held in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium when staff and visitors marched around one of its circular spaces, then ate fruit pies. At RDS, our celebrations include pi memorization contests, art, music, and... oh yes... FOOD.

"Basically, Pi Day is about getting kids jazzed about math.  Our school record for number of digits of pi correctly recited was 879, set by Jared Lamar (Class of 2009) last year.  Besides the pi-reciting contest, there's the pie baking contest and pi art contest too.  Even the youngest students who may not understand the mathematical concept can feel the excitement of Pi Day and the inherent coolness of math."  And this year's winners are....

Most Digits of Pi Recited: 8th grade: Adam Johnson; 7th grade: Kelly Johnson; 6th grade: Daniel SosebeePie

Tribute to Pi: 8th grade: Emily Meymand; 7th grade: Eden Cypher and Georgia Kidson; 6th grade: Katie McQueen

Art Contest: 8th grade: Sophia Denison-Johnston; 7th grade: Celia Bolgatz; 6th grade: Cheyenne Lloyd