It’s Pi Day — have you had your slice of pie today?
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REXBURG — The scientific concept of pi takes on a whole new meaning on March 14 — the date equivalent of 3.14.
At Madison High School that means an excuse to eat pie — and lots of it. On Tuesday, students bombarded the math department with well over 200 pies today in celebration of Pi Day.
Jennifer Palmer, a math teacher, started serving pie in her class on March 14 many years ago to get students excited about the math concept. Pi — or 3.14 — is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
The rest of Madison’s math department jumped on board five or six years ago and from there it has become a tradition with the students.
In order to have enough pie to feed the students, Cherri Hart, a math teacher at the school, said they offer a creative incentive.
“I give two Pi’s worth of extra credit test points (6.28 points) and the other teachers give what they want, one pi or two pi’s worth of points,” Hart said. “The students really like the extra credit, but they also think it’s fun and we have parents coming in and helping.”
Katie Kimpel, a students who works at Frontier Pies, said March 14 is definitely one of their busiest days, rivaling the amount of sales on Thanksgiving day.
“I noticed that there were extra people on the schedule today and then I remembered it was pi day,” Kimpel said. “We really will be crazy busy.”
Hart said that the first time the school did this, the local stores ran out of pies and they now have to call and remind the stores that it’s Pi Day.
“I saw a sign in Broulims the other day that said get your pi day pies here and we saw a pie over here that had a price tag of $3.14, or pi. I thought that was pretty clever,” Hart said.
