The number pi is one of the most popular numbers in mathematics and has been around for more than two millennia.

Pi, commonly referred to as 3.14, was originally discovered by ancient Greek mathematicians.

“Most people think that pi comes from the area of a circle,” Steve Butler, an associate professor in the mathematics department said. “Where pi really comes from is the circumference.”

“Take a circle and take its circumference and divide it by its diameter, the number you get is pi,” Butler said.

Circumference is the amount of distance around the entirety of a circle and diameter is the distance of two points across from each other on a circle.

“What happens when you draw a bigger circle,” Butler said, “when you scale both parts of your ratio…it doesn’t change that value.”

While pi originated from the circumference of a circle, it also helps find the area of a circle by making a rectangle like shape with a circle.

“If you divide a pizza into many, many slices and you take those slices and alternate the orientation,” Butler said, “one dimension is cross ways, or the radius and the other dimension, is formed by the crust on each side, which means that it’s pi times the radius.”

This forms the equation, area = πr^2.

Even though pi has been known for a long time it is still popular today.

“I think [it is so popular] because it’s one of the things that is known, but it’s so hard to compute,” Butler said.

There was a famous problem that the Greeks tried to solve called ‘Squaring the Circle’. This involved creating a square with the same area as a circle.

“Eventually it was proved that it can’t be done,” Butler said

Many people remember learning about pi and having competitions to remember as many digits as possible.

“You only need 20 to 30 digits at most,” Butler said, “most times just a few digits are enough.”

The infinite length of pi can be enjoyed many places including a Star Trek episode where Spock asks a computer to find the last digit of pi, causing the computer to self-destruct and a fifteen-hour long video of the Count from Sesame Street singing many of the digits of pi.