In honour of Pi Day, held annually on March 14 (3.14), Secondary Students at YCIS Shanghai’s Gubei Campus gathered together for a creative (and delicious) competition: A Pie (Pi) Tasting Competition! With students from over 50 countries, and different regional backgrounds among even those with a shared nationality, the variety of pies that students submitted were almost as numerous as this infinite mathematical constant!Throughout the day, students paid tribute to the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet and its numerical value with different maths activities and games. Classes made a “Pi chain” with different coloured strips of paper, listened to songs and poems that related to “pie”, and competed in a memory test to see who could remember the most of the 1.7 trillion digits (as calculated by computers) of the number that goes on forever without repeating itself. During a short break, students moved through classrooms to taste the pies, and voted on their favorite flavours.

According to Ms Julie Many, Head of the Mathematics Department, the purpose of the event is “to help students become even more engaged and excited about mathematics. Finding activities that don't just involve working obvious mathematics problems helps the students see that mathematics is all around us.” When calculations involved in baking are combined with the joy of tasting the result…now that’s a maths equation you can sink your teeth into!