Importance of ‘Pi’

UMB mathematician Manil Suri observes:

“Pi also opens a window into a more uncharted universe, the one consisting of transcendental numbers, which exclude such common irrationals as square and cube roots. Pi is one of the few transcendentals we ever encounter. One may suspect that such numbers would be quite rare, but actually, the opposite is true. Out of the totality of numbers, almost all are transcendental. Pi reveals how limited human knowledge is, how there exist teeming realms we might never explore.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/opinion/manil-suri-on-pi-day-celebrate-maths-enigmas.html

Cornell mathematician Steven Strogatz highlights the extraordinary importance of ‘pi’:

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/pi-day-why-pi-matters

He notes:

“Why do mathematicians care so much about pi? Is it some kind of weird circle fixation? Hardly. The beauty of pi, in part, is that it puts infinity within reach. Even young children get this. The digits of pi never end and never show a pattern. They go on forever, seemingly at random—except that they can’t possibly be random, because they embody the order inherent in a perfect circle. This tension between order and randomness is one of the most tantalizing aspects of pi.”