School Desk

Pi Day

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On March 13, more than 100 students flooded the cafeteria at the Bronx High School of Science, screaming, cheering and laughing.

The noise was deafening and wouldn’t have been out of place at a pep rally. But the students were not celebrating a sports team; they were gathered in honor of a revered mathematic symbol — pi or 3.14159265 … The infinite number is central to many mathematics, engineering and science formulas and is commonly used to determine the area of a circle.

Sponsored by the Bronx Science Parent Association, the Bronx Science Alumni Association and Math for America, the celebration kicked off at 3:14 p.m. with the raising of the pi symbol, similar to how “the ball” is raised before New Years Eve. For the duration of the competition, the p symbol floated above the room.

After, there was a fierce competition in which students tried to recite from memory as many numbers to the right of pi’s decimal point as they possibly could. In the end, 10th-grader Alexandra LaGrassa was triumphant, reciting 219 digits.
“There’s a rhythm to it,” she said after the battle. “There are a lot of patterns.”
Alexandra, who actually memorized 250 digits but fell just short, said her friend, Jimmy, knew 496 digits. Lucky for her, a test kept him away from the celebration.
The highlight of the day, however, was a pie-eating contest in which teachers chosen by the students dug into a pastry topped with chocolate frosting and a cherry.

“This is what they’re all waiting for,” Rosemarie Jahoda, assistant principal, said as the din got louder than a playoff game at Madison Square Garden.
The crowd favorite — and, in the end, the winner — was math teacher Kevin Cheung, who looked as though he was going to be sick for the duration of the competition.

“I just ate 6,000 calories. I can’t believe I ate all that myself. Oh my God,” Mr. Cheung gasped after the gluttonous competition was over and students had flocked to the table to snag the remaining pie for themselves.
So what’s the secret to success?

“You can’t chew it,” teacher David Cohen, who grew up in Riverdale and attended Bronx Science, said.

Nikki Dowling, School Desk, Pi Day, Bronx High School of Science, Bronx Science Parent Association
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