Eager eyes glossed over the display of extravagant pies bordering the third-floor hallway. Pi Day was in full swing, and CHS students lined up for a slice of the fun.
Coordinated by the math department, CHS has honored Pi Day for years. This time around, the organizers went all out and put together a total of seven pi-related activities. Leading up to the event, Jesse Richmond, a Community math teacher, excitedly described the coming attractions.
“On [Friday] we have the Pi Walk, where we’re going to walk 3.14 kilometers. We also have a few events taking place during lunch, which is extended to give us time to do that,” said Richmond.
These lunchtime festivities included a grab-and-go student tasting, corresponding to the pie competition. Students submitted their homemade pies to a panel of judges, who ranked them based on taste. This year, CHS junior Tia Cocciolone swept the floor with her Berry Pie. The decadent blend of blackberries, blueberries and raspberries had the judges handing Cocciolone her first-place prize.
“I’ve never actually made a pie before, but my mom is a baker,” Cocciolone said. “She showed me all the little tricks and tips and helped me make it. It was really fun.”
The pie competition and tasting are time-tested favorites, but the math department also experimented with some new activities this year: one of these additions invited participants to find their birthday in the digits of pi, while others, such as Buffon’s Needle experiment, encouraged students to interact with real-life mathematics. Apart from switching the activities, CHS math teacher Maneesha Mankad described how the coordinators have reworked the system to limit food waste.
“What we were finding was that when we just asked all the students to bring pies, we would have so much, and a lot of it would get thrown out,” Mankad said. “We controlled that a little bit better by having forum leaders have two or three people sign up. That way, there’s some commitment as to who’s bringing the pies and we are not wasting any food.”
Mankad has been able to witness how her students interact with math each day. Beyond the logistics of organizing Pi Day, she reflected on its psychological impacts.
“[Pi] is so ubiquitous that sometimes people feel anxious about dealing with it,” Mankad said. “What’s nice is that if you celebrate a day and make it into an event, the stigma and the fear of dealing with pi goes away.”
