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MATC
Math Club Presents Pi Day Celebration!
A math competition,
presentation and a pie-eating contest will highlight the Pi Day Celebration
at Madison Area Technical
College on Friday, March 14, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The event takes
place at the college’s Truax location, 3550 Anderson St., Madison.
Hosted by the MATC Mathematics Club, the event celebrates the mathematical
concept of Pi and supports the club’s assertion that “mathematics
is more than textbooks.”
Says club advisor
and math instructor, J. “Sri” Sriskandarajah, “Humans seem
endlessly fascinated by Pi, that big number with the funny symbol. Archimedes
and Leonardo da Vinci were obessed with it.”
Pi Day is an annual
event held by a handful of colleges and universities to celebrate the
math concept. Pi is a mathematical constant, the ratio of a circle’s
circumference to its diameter, and numerically equal to approximately
3.14. Pi has inspired poems, limericks, jokes and even a popular film,
and was recently calculated to eight billion digits using super computers.
The celebration is held each year on March 14, to reflect Pi’s value
(3.14).
The math competition,
from 10:15 to 11:15 a.m., includes teams of students from MATC, UW–Fond
du lac, UW–Marshfield/Wood County, UW-Marathon and UW–Washington
County, who will compete for trophies and a cash prize for the winning
team. The competition involves two rounds of multiple choice, pre-calculus-level
math questions.
“The Calculation
of Pi,” is the subject of a presentation at 12:15 p.m. by Professor
Ranjan Roy of Beloit College. Following the lecture will be the “Pie-athalon,”
a pie eating contest in which the winners are the contestants who can
consume the most pie in 3 qminutes, 14 seconds. Prizes will be awarded
for both top male and female contestants. The winner of a Pi Day Poster
Competition also will be announced at the event.
MATC is one of
the largest of the Wisconsin Technical College System’s 16 colleges
and serves approximately 50,000 individuals annually. It provides a comprehensive
curriculum of technical, liberal arts and science, adult basic education
and life enrichment studies and activities, as well as customized employee
training. MATC provides training in more than 100 career programs. It
awards associate degrees, vocational diplomas and certificates, and offers
non-degree courses. The college serves all or parts of 12 counties located
in south-central Wisconsin and offers instruction through five campuses
and various other locations throughout the district.
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Last
Modified:
March 7, 2003
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