On March 14, Becton’s Math Honor Society hosted a Pi Day event to showcase the importance of math in everyday life.
Mr. Joseph Malyack, advisor of the Math Honor Society, was excited to host the Pi Day activities. “It gave our Math Honor Society students the opportunity to share their love of mathematics with the school while showing how interactive and interesting mathematics can be to those who never experienced it in such a way,” Mr. Malyack commented.
Mathematics plays a crucial role in everyday life– a point Mr. Malyack hopes to have highlighted during the Pi Day event. “Whether you are calculating your budget or problem-solving at work, you are using critical thinking and quantitative literacy skills that you picked up in math classes. People use the skills of math in their daily routine even without realizing it,” he points out.
Indeed, the media center buzzed with activity as math classes and other visitors stopped by throughout the day to take part in a series of Pi Day challenges. One of the standout activities was the “Pi Chain,” where students wrote their names on colored links representing digits of pi, which were then assembled and displayed in the math hallway.
Another popular event was the “Roll Pi Digits” game, where students rolled three six-sided dice in an attempt to land a 3, 1, and 4 in a single roll—an achievement with approximately a 3.14% success rate, according to Mr. Malyack.
Students also tested their creativity in the “Pi-ku” Contest, crafting haikus with a 3-1-4 syllable pattern. Meanwhile, the “City Pi-Line” activity had participants design a skyline using the digits of pi as building heights, resulting in unique cityscapes due to pi’s non-repeating nature.
Rounding out the festivities, students received name tags featuring the position of their birthday within pi’s digits and competed to recite as many digits of pi as possible.
Seniors Mia Natale and Olivia Busa emphasized the significance of the event and the impact it had on students. “I’m glad the Math Honor Society was able to share how math can be used in such fun ways,” Natale shared. Busa, who assisted at the “Name the Pi Digits” station, enjoyed watching students put their memorization skills to the test. Seniors Allison Rodriguez and Nina Buda, along with junior Sophia Romano, emerged as the top winners.
