Middle School Math Students Study Pi in Anticipation of 3.14

3/26/2025

No matter how you slice it, Pi Day (3.14) is middle school math teacher Eliot Bloomberg’s favorite day.

Each year, Bloomberg and his students in grades 6, 7 and 8 dive into the history of π and how to calculate its value.

As part of their “celebration” of pi, the number representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, students were tasked with creating a pi-themed project. According to Bloomberg, they should “have fun doing it, and if they don’t have fun, they did something wrong.”

Sixth grader Shiv Padmanabhan’s project showed how the world, specifically science, would be different if pi were rounded to three when doing real work: nothing would work properly. Seventh grader Bradley Schutzer abandoned his original idea to find the next unknown digit of pi and turned it into a presentation on how digits of pi are found and why it’s not possible for a seventh grader with a laptop to find the next digit.

Ada Garberina ’30 made pi goodie bags for Bloomberg and her classmates. She enjoyed filling each bag with a handmade keychain, bookmark, bracelet and stickers, because “It connected with something we had learned in class but also gave us an opportunity for creativity.”

Marcelle Clunie ’29 and Natalia Fader ’29 paired up to entertain their classmates with a pi-inspired DJ mix board complete with matching headphones.

“We saw pictures on Pinterest and Google of DJ boards, and thought maybe we could DJ along to ‘The Pi Song’ (a fun rhyming song),” Clunie explained.

Fader said collaborating and sharing ideas added up to a fun time. “I learned how pi can be interpreted in a lot of ways and how you can turn it into art.”

Meanwhile, Anya Peri ’29, a gifted artist whose work is shown in Brooklyn galleries, presented a piece of watercolor art to define pi.

“I painted a calming landscape scene,” Peri said. “The river had many digits of pi, and I tried to make it look like the numbers were flowing in the river. I made the pi symbol as the sun, in between the mountains. I already knew that pi was infinite, so I liked the idea of pairing that with the river, which seems to keep flowing and going.”

Before they head into their next unit on the geometry of 3D shapes, Bloomberg enjoyed “seeing the students’ creative Pi Day ideas and having an opportunity to showcase some of their talents that may not always be showcased in math class.”