We Must Have Pi!

It’s Pi Day, Pi Day, gotta get down on Pi Day! Svaha has some new options fresh out of the oven for all your International Pi Day fashion needs.

Pi Day was originally organized at the San Francisco Exploratorium by American physicist Larry Shaw. The very first celebration of Pi Day saw such events as a circular parade, eating fruit pies, and memorization of pi’s decimal places to the furthest place one could think of. In the first year, Shaw declared that since the first three major digits of pi are “3.14” then the day should fall on March 14th every year. Since that time, the day has grown in popularity, even garnering international recognition, and it now serves to celebrate not only that wonderful ratio but also to celebrate mathematics in a broad sense.

Pi itself has been known of, and has been in use, for thousands of years. The first known calculation of it was done by Greek mathematician Archimedes around 250 BCE, though we don’t know if it was given a name for quick reference. It wasn’t until 1706 when a Welsh mathematician named William Jones decided to assign the Greek letter π, commonly written as “pi”, to describe it. This was chosen because pi is the first letter of the Greek word “perimetros” meaning “circumference.”

Its primary function is to serve as the ratio between a circle’s diameter and its circumference, therefore it is a constant since no matter how big or small a circle is, the ratio of its circumference to its diameter will always remain the same. The number is both irrational and transcendental, meaning that it will list a string of decimals forever, but not in any distinct pattern.

Early Indian and Chinese mathematicians had calculated Pi’s decimal out to 5 or 7 places respectively, but today we know the place value of pi up to 62.8 TRILLION places! 5 or 7 is enough for any applied mathematical need, but calculating Pi to a higher place serves as both a fun record to break as well as a test for computational power in new supercomputers. Those 62.8 trillion decimal places took 108 days to compute, beating the previous record by both 12.8 trillion places and 195 days. Quite the leap!

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Now that you have a very brief history of pi, hopefully you can see why we’re so enamored with it! It may not be the most used or most common number in mathematics, but it’s definitely one of the coolest. We hope to bring some of our enthusiasm to bear with this new mandala print. If you take a closer look into it, you’ll see a lot of pi’s subtle properties brought to life and we think it would just look wonderful on you! The Pi Mandala print will be available on our Rachel Dress, Adult Tees, Kid’s Tees, Scarves, and a Stainless Steel Necklace.

Click here to browse the Pi Mandala collection!

If mandala prints aren’t your thing, then perhaps we could entice you with a delicious diversion, and what’s better than blueberry pie? Er, blueberry pi? If you ask this writer, the answer is “not much.” It may honor the sillier side of the celebration but that doesn’t make it any less appropriate! Round out your wardrobe with our new Blueberry Pi print, available on our Ida tops and Kids’ Twirl Dresses.

Click here to shop the Blueberry Pi collection!

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