Pi (π) Day

Darren Aronofsky, director of the hit ballet film “Black Swan,” made his directorial debut with “Pi (π),” a movie whose motif is math. With the movie, he won the Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998 and the Newcomer of the Year award by the Florida Film Critics Circle. The protagonist of "Pi" is a mathematician who believes he can learn everything including stock market forecasts through math. March 14 is “Pi (π) Day” when people eat a pie, watch the movie, and raise awareness about math.

Pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, is represented by the irrational number 3.1415926... The origin of Pi Day is unclear but what is certain is that the day is intended to raise awareness of math as represented by pi. Pi Day is thus more meaningful than the marketing-ridden White Day. Albert Einstein was born March 14, or 3.14, an identical value with pi. He must have been born to become a scientist.

Pi Day, which was celebrated by mathematicians for fun, has a special meaning this year. Korea`s Education, Science and Technology Ministry and the Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity have declared 2012 the year of math education at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. Korea will host many important math events this year. ICME-12, which Seoul will host in July, is the Olympics of math education and attracts some 4,000 math teachers from more than 100 countries. The event is a good opportunity to show the excellence of Korea’s math education, as evidenced by the country`s results in international comparison programs, and enhance Korea’s math education through discussions with math education communities from other countries.

Kim Yong-woon, a former Hanyang University professor who now heads the Math Culture Institute, said in his book, “Korea has professional mathematicians but no culture based on math.” He added that most Koreans study math for 12 years from elementary to high school but they want to get out of the "math nightmare." The science foundation had a qualitative interview with high school students last year, and found that they consider math a subject for college entrance and unrelated to everyday life. Many students believe that they have to memorize math. Hopefully, Pi Day can be an opportunity to correct misunderstanding and misconceptions of math and get the subject more popular with the general public.

Editorial Writer Chung Sung-hee (shchung@donga.com)