From ancient Greeks to geeks it's the world's favourite number

Not many numbers inspire psychological thrillers or love songs, but humanity has had a long obsession with the enigma of π (pi), which will get a full airing to many many decimal places at a special public event on Monday 14 March at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Led by pi expert Professor Jonathan Borwein, the history, pop culture and hard maths of the world's favourite transcendental number will be explored on what is now designated international Pi Day.

"Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference and diameter, and is one of the most important and influential numbers in history," said UTS Professor Mary-Anne Williams, Associate Dean (Research and Development) in the UTS Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.

"It helped build the pyramids and today is crucial in advancing mathematics, engineering, computer games, astrophysics, cosmology, economics, and mobile technology. Pi Day is on March 14 of each year - the 3rd month and 14th day - as 3.14 are its first three digits.

"Professor Borwein, now based in Australia at the University of Newcastle, is one of the world's most imaginative and creative mathematicians and an architect of the Borwein Algorithm for computing pi.

"He will be sharing his passion for pi while showing us how it connects the scientific and engineering wonders of the ancient Greeks to 21st century advanced computing with the help of Andrew Mattingly and Glenn Wightwick from IBM Australia and David Bailey from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley."

Mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers are on an unending quest to calculate ever more accurate values of pi, part of the reason for its status as an enigma.

It pops up in popular culture in films (Pi, 1998), songs (Pi, Kate Bush, 2005) and is even wielded by Mr Spock as a weapon to disable a rogue computer in an episode of Star Trek.

But the bid to calculate pi more accurately is no mere obsessive exercise says Professor Borwein. He will discuss how a 29 million digit calculation of pi at NASA just after the 1986 shuttle disaster uncovered hardware and software faults in the space agency's supercomputer.

Pi Day at UTS is being held at UTS's Aerial Function Centre from 5.30pm on 14 March. All are welcome, but RSVPs are requested. Visit the event page for more details: datasearch2.uts.edu.au/feit/it … ail.cfm?ItemId=25541

Provided by University of Technology, Sydney