Everybody loves Pi: @CWRU math chair explains the why behind the 3.14 obsession

Newswise — “A lot of people know pi through their geometry classes in school, but that’s really it—they’re not sure why it’s important,” said Weihong Guo, chair of mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “In reality, pi is really the most useful number human beings have to use for so many things in the real world.”

Those real-world examples range from calculating the surface area of a soda can (“How much material do you need to make this thing? Make a million of them?” Guo said) to sizing age-appropriate soccer balls to using a ‘Bell Curve’ to predict the odds of winning the lottery.

Guo said pi also “gave rise to many important insights in our physical world. It's been used to help calculate the orbit of planets in the solar system and examine how ripples in rivers carry energy.”

Weihong Guo's other research interests include Mathematical Image Analysis and Processing, Inverse Problems, Scientific Computing and Computer Vision--but like all of us, she also loves Pi

She is available by request through Pi Day on Tuesday.