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To Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 400–350 bce) goes the honour of being the first to show that the area of a circle is proportional to the square of its radius. In today’s algebraic notation, that proportionality is expressed by the familiar formula A = πr2. Yet the constant of proportionality, π, despite its familiarity, is highly mysterious, and the quest to understand it and find its exact value has occupied mathematicians for thousands of years. A century after Eudoxus, Archimedes found the first good approximation of π: 31071

Pi, in mathematics, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The symbol π was devised by British mathematician William Jones in 1706 to represent the ratio and was later popularized by Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler. Because pi is irrational (not equal to the ratio of any two whole numbers), its digits do not repeat, and an approximation such as 3.14 or 22/7 is often used for everyday calculations. To 39 decimal places, pi is 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197. The Babylonians (c. 2000 bce) used 3.125 to approximate pi, a value they obtained by calculating the p...

Here's why some people care about pi and its day of celebration, March 14.

If you've been using Pi Day as an excuse to just eat pie, that's just peachy (or apple or chocolate cream). But there's so much more to know about pi.

In honor of Pi Day, we bring you a brief history of everyone's favorite irrational constant.