Shouts of, “It’s red!” and “Click on blue!” echoed from room 127 Friday, March 14, as Archer celebrated Pi Day. Pi Day is celebrated all around the world March 14, recognizing the mathematical constant that starts with 3.14. While Pi is a concept students usually hear about early on in their academic careers, most start actually working with it in middle and upper school, math teacher Lucas Hoffman said.
Pi Day at Archer has previously been celebrated with a scavenger hunt, but this year, Archer’s math teachers decided to host a Kahoot with questions about the history of Pi and easy math questions. Their choice was based on what the teachers expected middle school students would enjoy more. They also offered free pie in celebration of the holiday.
When asked what her favorite part was during the Pi Day celebration, Emma Winkler (‘25) said she loved the Kahoot and eating sweet treats.
“It was nice to see different faces and play games with people from different grades,” Winkler said. “[It] was a great way to bring the community together.”
Hoffman was one of the math teachers that helped organize the event. He said Pi is a fun math pun that brings people together.
“Everyone tends to gravitate towards Pi. It’s just one of those fancy math terms that people like to memorize,” Hoffman said.”They learn it at a younger age, so they probably will have the courage to show it off. I think those combinations just make it an irresistible thing.”
Hoffman said another reason why the math teachers host Pi Day during this time of year — besides the date — is that it may help students become more excited about learning math at this time of year, which can give them the extra boost they need in their studies. He said that, in addition to celebrating at lunch, the precalculus students learned about Pi in their classes.
“We’re going to be learning about the unit circle,” Hoffman said. “The unit circle is built off of Pi, so it’s going to be their first real introduction to using Pi in an everyday math way.”
The teachers talked about the history of Pi and shared information about the number that students might not know, Hoffman said.
“To keep Pi Day educational, [we] would be just bringing up the history of Pi, bringing up what it is as a ratio, talking about circles, talking about these things that people that might not know … and would be open to learning more about it,” Hoffman said. “Then tying that into some pretty surface-level questions, using a circle area or volume of a cylinder in order to show the students — or anybody that’s interested in these questions — that they can use Pi in a real world way.”
Another student who attended the celebration, Charlotte Titmarsh(‘27), said she had fun eating pie and cookies and hanging out with her friends.
“I think Pi Day is a fun way to celebrate math and also with a sweet treat,” Titmarsh said. “It was fun to learn about all the stuff and participate and see what I knew.”
Hoffman described how math is not just about arithmetic and memorizing equations, but can also be a tool to bring people together. He hoped the celebration sparked more excitement about math among the Archer community.
“Pi is something that you can learn, something that you can use, and not [just] memorizing pi … [but] using it to be inspirational to not just memorize your way through math, but see the functions of it and the different moves it makes,” Hoffman said. “Perhaps you’ll start liking math in a whole new way.”
