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Pi Day Trivia 20 Questions Pi Day Trivia 20 questions 1. What is the formal definition of π? 8. One way to calculate the value of π is to find (a) the ratio of a circle's circumference to its the perimeters of polygons inscribing and diameter circumscribing a circle. The circumference of (b) 3.14159 the circle is somewhere between those two (c) the radius of a unit circle values and the values approach π as the (d) the surface area of a sphere of diameter number of sides of the polygon approaches 22/7 infinity. Who originated this method of (e) a delicious dessert, especially if it approximating π? contains cherries (a) Plato (b) Archimedes 2. Johann Lambert in 1761 proved the following (c) Pythagoras about π: (d) Socretes (a) π > e (e) Leonardo da Vinci (b) no pattern exists in π's digits (c) π is irrational 9. In the first 30 digits of the decimal expansion (d) the area of a circle is equal to π times the of π, which number is missing? radius squared. (e) π < 22/7 3. In what year were the first 100 digits of π first calculated? 10. Consider the following quote: (a) 48 BC Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its (b) 1947 height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in (c) 1492 circumference. (d) 1706 4. Which of the following binary numbers is Where is this quote from? closest in value to π? (a) 11.0010010000111111 (b) 101.110101000111100 (c) 10.0001101010110100 What value of π is implied in the quote? (d) 1.10111011010010011 (e) 111.0101111010111111 5. Give the formula for the volume of a 3D 11. Who, in 1706, first gave the Greek letter "π" sphere. its current mathematical definition? (a) Albert Einstein (b) Napoleon Bonaparte (c) William Jones (d) Archimedes 6. In 1897, Indiana's House of representatives (e) Max Planck passed a bill unanimously setting π (incorrectly) equal to what? 12. Imagine if you wrapped a rope tightly around the earth at the equator. How much longer would you have to make the rope if you wanted it to be exactly one foot above the surface all the way around? 7. Excluding the leading 3, the first n digits of π add up to 666. What is n? 13. Pi is ubiquitous in the branch of mathematics 19. What is the document that has the earliest known as statistics. The maximum height of known reference to π in history? 1 (a) The Bible what famous curve is equal to ? (b) The Rosetta Sone, approximatley 200 BC 2! (c) An Egyptian papyrus scroll written (a) the Logistic curve approximately 1650 BC by Ahmes the (b) the bell (Gaussian) curve for a standard Scribe normal distribution (d) Euclid's Elements written in the 3rd (c) the step function y = int(x) between x=-17 century BC and x=0 (d) the Sarstedt curve 20. In 1934, a professor was dismissed from his (e) Euler's population density curve position for teaching in an "un-German" style after saying (correctly) that π/2 is the value of 14. Which of the following fractions most closely x between 1 and 2 for which cos(x) equals approximates π? zero. (a) 2549491779/811528438 (a) J. Robert Oppenheimer (b) 22/7 (b) Elias Broms (c) 864/275 (c) Edmund Landau (d) 5371151999754/1709690779483 (d) Albert Einstein (e) 3927/1250 (e) Max Planck 15. In 1949 a digital computer, ENIAC, was first used to calculate the digits of π. It took 70 hours to compute π to 2037 decimal places. What does ENIAC stand for? (2037) 16. What is the value of ei! 17. Name a famous scientist with a Pi Day Birthday. 18. Hiroyuki Goto holds the world record for reciting the digits of π. He was able to recite π to how many decimal places? (a) 6000 (b) 17,000,000 (c) 314,159 (d) 500 (e) 42,000 Tie Breakers 21. Suppose you formed the following series of natural numbers, taken from successively larger strings of digits from the decimal expansion of the number π: 3 31 314 3141 31415 314159 3141592 Out of the first 1000 numbers in this series, how many are primes? (a) 48 (b) 34 (c) 4 (d) 21 (e) 58 22. Pi is transcendental What does "transcendental" mean? Not the root of any integer polynomial Who proved that? Lindemann When? 1882 23. What is the volume of a pizza of thickness a and radius z pi – zz a.
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