I first became aware of Pi in 2nd or 3rd grade, when there was a banner on our classroom wall showing the first 20 or 30 digits. It said something like “Pi ≈ 3.1415…”. I ask the teacher (though I don’t remember her name, now) what “Pi” was, and was told that it had to do with circles, and that we’d be learning about it later in the year.

When the “Circles Unit” came, we did most of the computation by hand (this was early elementary school) and approximated Pi as 3.14 (or 22/7, if we were “doing fractions”). We learned about the area formula: Pi*r^2 and the circumference formula: Pi*d. Somewhere along the line, I started memorizing the numbers off that banner. To this day, I’ve really never memorized any more than that, though I’ve tried on numerous occasions.

Later on, in Geometry (I think 7th or 8th grade), we started graphing Pi-related things on TI-92s, thus kindling my interest in TI Calculators. We learned formulas for the surface area (4pi*r^2) and volume (4/3*pi*r^3) of a sphere and probably some others. It was about this time that Dan and I started observing Pi Day and registered this domain name.

– Kevin