March 14, 2015 Pie Day, a Special Day for Foresters and Math Nerds
My son Nick mentioned to me last night that he was going to head into town in the morning so that he could celebrate Pi day with a slice of Pie at the local café near where he is working in the woods.
3.14, or Pi, is an important number to most Foresters and many others who rely on mathematical concepts to perform their work.
In the work that the Foresters are doing today they are using two formulas over and over to do their work.
First in determining the size one of the two parts in every plot they do; they must determine the radius of the circle that their plot must take in order to sample 1/100th of an acre of seedlings.
Next for each tree in both the fixed and variable part of the plot; the diameter must be determined, not by measuring the diameter but by measuring the circumference of the tree. Again Pi plays an important part in this calculation.
So I did not begrudge him the pleasure of celebrating this fun day with a slice of Pie, but when he called at 7 to tell me he was going to write a blog about it, I did tell him “no, you are burning daylight get out to the woods, I will write the blog post”.
So he called a bit ago to tell me that he is having a very productive day with the pie in his belly, and remind me to write that blog post about Pi/Pie.
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