This article was published in the Somerville Journal on April 24, 2003 under the title of “Night as easy as Pi.”

FOR FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT - TRY MATH
by Mary McClellan
Move over Friday night at the movies. There's new entertainment in town. The East Somerville Community School cafeteria was at maximum capacity with kids, moms, dads, grandparents, teachers, school administrators, public officials, Somerville High School student facilitators, baby brothers, baby sisters and friends. They were there to celebrate the mathematical number Pi, a number that has no ending and whose beginning is rooted in ancient Egypt.
The Somerville Mathematics Fund made history as it initiated its first family math night on March 14th (the date chosen because of its digits’ equivalence to Pi's rounded off value of 3.14) for students in grades five through eight. Decked in student designed Pi tee shirts with their own original poems and songs in hand, students from the East Somerville Community School, Healey School and the Powderhouse School gathered together to enjoy a great evening of food, prizes, and games.
Young and old confronted intriguing and fun math challenges such as drawing free hand the area of their favorite CD. Mystery abounded as contestants slid their hands into black boxes to estimate in centimeters the circumference of unseen lids. The mathematical and athletic types tried their skills at the miniature golf greens and the tossing of circular discs at targets that would yield the best probability of winning. A sweet tooth helped to estimate the number of circular candies placed in cylinder shapes of varying sizes, while the artistic designed Pi buttons to wear. It was pure mathematical magic as students dropped bunches of toothpicks between parallel lines to discover that the ratio of how the toothpicks fell approximated Pi's rounded off value of 3.14. Songs about Pi were sung by everyone and digits of Pi recited to 192 decimal places by Joanne Flores. The culminating activity was the demonstration of how far two different bicycle wheels rolled and who was the best predictor of the exact distance.
Everyone left Pi night as a winner. Following the pizza dinner, every guest went home with a pie and a memory that Math is fun.
For more information about The Somerville Mathematics Fund, to make a donation or to find out how to join future mathematical festivities, contact Erica Voolich (617-666-0666) or visit their website: http://www.somervillemathematicsfund.org.