Saturday, March 14, 2015

Life of Pi

Today, 14 March (3/14), is Pi Day,  a day that maths is celebrated around the world. As the official Pi Day site says,

"Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159."

Lots of readers like maths as well as books and maths is important too - readers don't need to choose between two. Just as reading and literacy needs to be celebrated, so too does maths and numeracy.

(2001, Knopf Canada)

But, if like me, "pi" makes you think of the excellent book, Life of Pi, by Yann Martel before you think of 3.14 and other numbers then you can recognise Pi Day by reading!  Being greedy, "pi" also reminds me of "pies"; have a look at this guest post by Goldie Alexander on food in children's literature  and this one on my bookshelf for more book ideas.

If you're in Sydney today, you could also celebrate Pi Day by attending the 2015 Kids' Lit Quiz Australia national final at the Monkey Baa Theatre Company's Lend Lease Darling Quarter Theatre in Darling Harbour. The Final starts at 1 pm and entry is free. See this guest post by Daria O'Neill for more details.

However it is that you recognise Pi Day, whether it be by doing some maths, reading some books or eating some pies, I hope it is a good one for you.  Good luck to all the teams competing today in the 2015 Australian Final.

1 comment:

  1. We have our Australian team! Here's the report on the National Final:

    "Congratulations to Orange High School, winners of the Australian Kids Lit Quiz final! They are off to Connecticut to compete in the world final with the following schools:

    Litcham School - UK
    Sedgwick Middle School - USA
    Southridge School - Canada
    Manor Gardens Primary School - South Africa

    Next stop for KLQ is New Zealand and Singapore to find the best teams there! "

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