# You're reading: Posts Tagged: pi

### Doodling for π day

It’s that time of year again – 3.14 (March 14th), a.k.a π day, is just around the corner, and if you want to do something fun on the day, now’s the time to plan it. One nice way to celebrate this brilliant infinite string of digits is by creating π-inspired art, and we’ve spotted a couple of relevant links if that’s your jam.

• Maths learning organisation (and Carnival of Mathematics stalwarts) Ganit Charcha are running a competition for schools in India, challenging them to ‘Doodle for π‘ – students should take inspiration from a mathematical concept, and create a doodle/image to submit. The competition invites creativity and imagination, and runs until 12th March.
• If you’re not in India, you can still use π as inspiration for artworks – Think Maths speaker and Aperiodical Math-off contestant Zoe Griffiths has put together a set of ideas for how to use π to create beautiful pictures, to decorate your home, school or office.

### Carnival of Mathematics 158

This is the 158th Carnival of Mathematics, a monthly round-up of interesting maths bits from across the internet. Convention dictates that I now therefore specify some interesting facts about the number 158. Unfortunately I am writing this on a train with no internet access, which will make fulfilling this obligation more than usually challenging.

### πkm run challenge – completed

As a final update, I’ve now finished my πkm running quest. I’m very tired now! Thanks to everyone who has donated at pikm.run, spread the word about it, come running with me or otherwise facilitated this.

Here’s the final set of photos and video clips from the last week, and for the data fiends among you, a sneaky look at my spreadsheet of runs. With a graph, as requested by Hannah Fry.

### πkm running challenge: 21-day round up

I’m still going! Two-thirds of the way through my epic running binge, and I’ve managed to keep it up every day so far. Since my last round-up on 7th, I’ve run another πkm each day, and my fundraising total is now at 22%, which is over £700 (and if you didn’t notice, that sentence just contained ’22’, ‘over’ and ‘7’).

If I can make it to £1000 before the end of the month, I’ll be pretty pleased! Donate at pikm.run, or see below for my daily sweaty photos/videos/instagram posts.

### πkm Running Challenge: 7-day update

This month I'm doing a completely irrational sponsored run for Sport Relief, aiming to raise £100π by running πkm per day, every day in March. I'm one week in, and here's the story so far.

### I’m going to run πkm every day in March

Inspired by the BBC’s Sport Relief fundraising campaign, I’ve decided to set myself a vaguely mathematical running challenge. My current routine does involve a little running, but nothing serious, so I’ve given myself a bar to aim for that’s both vaguely achievable, and completely irrational.

I’ll aim to run π kilometres (or as close as I can get, with the measuring instruments I have access to) each day during the month of March. This will either be on the treadmill at my gym – in which case I’ll try to get a photo of the ‘total distance’ readout once I’ve finished – or out in the real world, for which I’ll use some kind of running GPS logging device, to provide proof I’ve done it each day. Some days I’ll run on my own, and others I’ll be accompanied by friends/relatives, who’ll be either running as well or just making supportive noises. At the end of the month, I’ll post an update documenting my progress/success/failure.

Serious request: if you know of anywhere in the UK I can reasonably get to where there’s an established circle that’s exactly 1km in diameter, I can try to come and run round the circumference of it. Drop me an email if so.

If you’d like to support my ridiculous plan, you can follow my progress and donate on my fundraising page, or encourage others to do so by visiting pikm.run (I paid £4 for the URL, so now I have to do it). Sport Relief is the even-numbered-years-counterpart of Comic Relief, which together raise money for thousands of projects all over the UK and in the developing world, to help the vulnerable and those in need.

### Measuring π with a pendulum

Friends of the Aperiodical, nerd-comedy troupe Festival of the Spoken Nerd, are currently on tour around the UK. As part of their show, questionably titled You Can’t Polish a Nerd, Matt Parker attempts to calculate the value of $\pi$ using only a length of string and some meat encased in pastry. He’s previously done this on YouTube, and the idea was inspired by the Aperiodical’s 2015 Pi Approximation Challenge, and in particular my own attempt to approximate $\pi$ with a (more conventional) pendulum.