On Wednesday, March 14 (aka 3/14), students, teachers and coaches gathered in the JTCC School for our annual celebration of Pi Day. For several hours, we enjoyed food, math and more.
This year, our pie-tasting contest was more fruitful than ever before – families and staff members dedicated 20 different pies! The consensus winner, and recipient of a gift card to a family bakery in Silver Spring, MD, was Chase Cahill-Welsh. But the MVP of this portion of our program was definitely Andre Abramov, father of new student Polina Abramova, who donated dozens of baked goods (enough to cover a whole table)! Thanks to all those who donated pies and other baked goods for our celebration.
The second event of the Pi Day celebration was an individual competition, in which students took turns showing off their powers of memory. The contest was how many digits of pi they could recite from memory – and since the number does not repeat, and never ends, this is indeed a challenge. About half a dozen of our students took a turn, and we had a close winner, Mason Robins (53 decimal places), until Muhammad Dossani came off the courts from Warrior Wednesday and indeed proved himself a true Pi Warrior by reciting to 99 decimal places with no preparation or warm-up. (Mason settled for second place.) Congrats to all the participants for their hard work – many of them had never studied pi previously, and were able to commit several dozen decimal places to memory in just a few hours. Our two top finishers were rewarded with gift cards to local restaurants.
The last event was a team trivia contest, in which the groups were asked questions about all things “Pi,” “Pie,” and “Pi-.” By the narrowest of margins, one group of students edged a group of adults as well as the rest of their own peers. The winning team shared a number of gift cards to local restaurants.
Thanks to everyone in the JTCC community who came out in support of a fun event. And special thanks to Wilfrance Lominy for coordinating the food and gift cards. Math, food and competition – how could we go wrong?
See you next year for Pi Day 2019!
