| Mondrian Pi |
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| CREDIT: MARTIN KRZYWINSKI |
| (knowablemagazine@annualreviews.org) March 14, 2021 It’s beginning to look a lot like Pi Day. So, in honor of one of the High Holy Days of mathdom, here’s some pi-inspired art. Every year, pies are baked and circles are celebrated on March 14, a date whose digits (3/14) equate to the first three digits of pi (3.14159265…and so on), the ratio of every circle’s circumference to its diameter — one of the most important and alluring numbers in mathematics. And for nearly every Pi Day since 2013, data visualization expert Martin Kryzwinski has created an artistic representation of the infinitely repeating number. In this one, from 2015, Krzywinski first divides a square with three vertical lines — three being the first digit in pi. He then captures the next four digits — 1, 4, 1, 5 — with one horizontal line in the first column, four lines in the second column and so on. Keeping up this pattern with alternating vertical and horizontal lines for 3,628 digits of pi, and coloring in the ensuing boxes, produces this image. This technique for encoding numbers is known as treemapping and is a common approach to visualizing hierarchical data. For those without plans for Pi Day, you can always wait until June 28 and celebrate Tau Day, in honor of pi doubled (6.28) — a number some consider to be even more important than pi itself. |