March 14 is one of the student’s favorite day at YLHS, also known as Pi Day. Students celebrate at lunch by eating pie and participating in other Pi Day festivities in order to honor the mathematical constant, originally defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. The irrational number, represented by the Greek letter π, brings joy to  Mustangs every year as math teachers offer extra credit if you make a Pi Day poster and bring in an actual pie to share with students to eat at lunch.

Along with feasting on pies, ASB hosts several pi-related competitions for students to showcase their eating, memorization, artistic, and throwing skills. At the beginning of lunch, students line up to enter the pie eating contest. Each are given an entire pie as they gorge themselves in the rich dessert. There is only one rule: you cannot use your hands, resulting in pie filled faces as occasionally upset stomachs. Although it was a close race, YLHS senior Paul Kane (12) won the pie eating contest, devouring his blueberry pie with determination and crushing the other hopefuls.  

After the pie eating competition comes the pi reciting contest, as pi is an infinite decimal. Students with exceptional memorization skills compete to see who can recite the most numbers in pi by either using mnemonic devices or other strategies. While most students only know pi as 3.14, Charles Chen (12) took the crown this year, again, impressing others with his ability to recite a large amount of the irrational number. The current Guinness World Record is held by Lu Chao of China, who recited 67,890 digits of pi (livescience.com).

You do not need to be a math genius to win the next event: the pi poster competition. Although a majority of math students turn in pi posters to acquire the much needed extra credit points, only the top three that display their most creative and artistic ability win. Students either fill their posters with funny pi puns or jokes, interesting pi facts (the most common being that Albert Einstein’s birthday is March 14th), or drawings to represent the constant. Thomas Ko (11), Camey Liu (11), and Shannon Adler (11) incorporated their artistic talents to beat out the other contestants and win the poster making competition.

Finally, the last event hosted by ASB is the infamous pie throwing contest. Math teachers from pre-algebra to calculus are good sports and graciously volunteer to allow students to throw pie at them. For a donation of only one dollar, students launch pies at the teachers as a release to finally get their frustrations out as math is generally known to be a tricky subject to learn. Tiffany Vo (12) wished she had spare change for she would have loved to throw a pie at Mr. Peacock, for his class is “extremely hard and frustrating.” However, Mr. Peacock is “one of [her] favorite teachers ever,” so she holds “no hard feelings” towards the “struggles” she experiences in AP Calculus BC.