Pi Day: fun with numbers: 'fixing' pi (π)

Quest for Pi solved with polygons 🥧 - 22/7=pi (3.14...) since ancient architects calculated it.

Understanding irrational numbers: pi vs. rational numbers - 

Pi as a fraction? It's possible #shorts #math - Visualization of pi being irrational

Worship the number, Kids, like in dumb religion

At UC Berkeley, my roommate Nathaniel and I used to mull over the Big Questions -- rebirth, telepathy, PSI, ultimate reality, physics, infinity, the nature of space, psychic powers, black holes, UFOs, the meaning of life, the futility of death, and the importance of birth control, in addition to debating whether reading fiction (like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) could serve any practical function. Those were the salad days, under a powerful red light in a half-mannequin lamp in otherwise very hippie digs, there was no question we would not tackle. I came at things from mysticism, literature and psychology, whereas he was the numbers man, practical engineer, and theoretical physicist.

Douglas Adams' fictional book about a Guide

He loved sports, I loved music. He did homework (problem sets) with all his free time, and I meditated at the Berkeley Zen Center and more or less gazed at my navel the rest of the time. He was much smarter, but I got better grades. We were in school to be schooled and went on to grad school to continue the cat and mouse, chasing GPAs and glory of a most trivial and nerdy sort. Because what college really gives a person of privilege is the leisure to think, philosophize, question, debate, foster intellectual creativity, and expand. How sad that so many people spend it drinking or doing all the things they missed out in high school from having to study so much to get into a place like Cal, Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, or Yale in the first place. We were sober for our discussions.

If only I had done more math, if only he had taken a real philosophy class (instead of accidentally landing himself in a course on logic), what might have been? We'd be two doctors having this debate:

• Natty, my good man, let me propose a problem for analysis.
• Yeah-yeah, Dawg, wassup?
• As you are a privileged white male in our society, having undertaken a full and rigorous course of mathematics up to and including calculus, I have a thought experiment for you.
• Aw, Man, drop that b*tch, and let's hear it.
• Would you mind, Friend, dispensing with the urban diction?
  
• The whuh?
• The Ebonics or whatever manner of slang you're currently employing.
• Say whut, Nugs? I be talkin' like I always be talkin! Word!
• You never talk like this! Anyway, if it's what you prefer, it's just that you're making a mockery of these proceedings.
• Ahh, yeah, lemme git da redlight! Sounds like an all nighter to wax on 'bout.
• Here it is. I say pi (π, 3.14159...) is stupid because it is, as you say, "irrational." I want it to be rational rather than go on forever. And I think I thought up a way to do it.
• Do whut, Dawg?
• Get it to end, get it to be rational, get it to divide cleanly (without remainder), get all the measurements in order, from say a perspicacious, anal, or OCD drive in me to make better pyramids, architecture, and other low-to-no margin of error constructions by making the calculations in the blueprints better.
• "Better"?
• They'll be better in that they come out without infinite remainders of trailing digits beyond the decimal point.
• No need, my Brutha.
• This has never been about a need. This is pure science with no (apparent) application, research for its own sake, and you're just the man to do. Take this back to your professors and put it to them. They may see the wisdom of such a pursuit in building, calculating, and approaching the verities of life in a perfect simulation/world.
• Pi can'ts bee evenly divided; it stays irrational.
• I know. But I have a way to evenly divide it and make it rational, that is, to turn it from an odd number to an even number.
• Ain't gonna happen, Bruh.
• That's what the purpose of this thought experiment is! I'm going to make it happen. See if you don't agree, as my mind is not bogged down with all the math knowledge, rules acceptance, and numerical assumptions you labor under, I think I'm onto something. It's very easy in theory. How it would be proven, that I leave up to you. I'm the visionary madman making a creature. You are a white lab coat wearing functionary in this thought lab.
• STEP 1: Switch from Base 10 to another base, such as Base 11 (or 13, 22, 7, 28, 60, 364, or 365). We'll start with those first.
• STEP 2: Calculate pi. I bet it will break even without all those digits after the decimal.
• Aww, ai don't think it'll work, Dawg, ai'ight?
• STEP 3: Keep plugging in different bases until it does work.
• Whut's da use? If it ain't workin, how's swtichin gonna work it?
• I suggest we try Base 11.5 or Base 5. Then Base 10.66 or 10.67. See Base 10 is even, and I think that's the fundamental problem, so let's switch to an odd base.
• "Odd base"?
• Yes, something that is not even like 10.
• Ya may be onto sumthin.
• I know. And I need you to prove it. Otherwise, I'm going to have to resort to Mathletics, AI, Chat GPT, Grok, and other demonic entities to work it out. And you know they can't, for all they can do is tell me what a genius I am and how I just invented a new math system, and all that other back patting and feelgood replying they do to sincere saps who resort to such compliments when, in fact, they need pushback.
• I ain't sure Texas Instruments calculators can handle this job cuz, internally, they might be juzz as jacked as math books in publik schoolz, ya hear?
• Yeah, I hear. We may have to use a computer or supercomputer for this one. Doesn't your physics class have a lab with just such a program or IBM, Apple, or Hewlett Packard device?  

Supporting mixed-level math learning: Mathletics success story from elementary

(Kristina Gobetti, Feb. 19th, 2026) Categories: Educators

Int'l Day of Women and Girls in Science

In classrooms where students read at different levels, teaching math becomes a double challenge: helping students understand both the mathematics and the questions [word problems] themselves.

Teaching a split class in rural Alberta, Canada, Jennifer Doherty at Alder Flats Elementary School needed a program flexible enough to support all her students.

She found that solution in Mathletics, an online math program for schools that has become an essential tool for building numeracy [the number version of literacy] skills and confidence. Watch Doherty explain how Mathletics works in her classroom every day, from audio support to clear progress reporting. More

Is Pi rational? Not by this definition