Director's Column: Pi Day

As we begin another month in much of the world, a date is abbreviated as day/month/year. The units get increasingly
larger – it’s logical! It makes sense. But, like our resistance to the metric system, American date abbreviations are not logical, as we typically invert the first two numbers: month/day/year.

Why am I telling you this? Because Pi Day relies on the weird American system of abbreviating dates. March 14 is Pi Day: 3/14 (or 3.14…). There is no April 31, so the rest of the world has to use our irrational system to celebrate Pi Day with us.

Sidebar: This is not exactly an aberration, as America tends to assert/impose its cultural hegemony all the time anyway, but I digress.

Second sidebar: Pi, or π as it’s written in mathematics, expresses the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is an irrational number, meaning it goes on forever, infinitely.

There are two popular themes for observing Pi Day, and they are Math and Pie, so I am combining them both to give you pie charts. They are not a cohesive series, just a reflection of some of the things I’ve been thinking about.

*note: “Indoctrination of a social agenda,” which, judging by the context, I tend to read as, “What if this book inspires my kid to engage in critical thinking that might upset my worldview?”

In total, all of these books represent a little more than one-third (36%) of children’s books published in the United States that year. I think publishers can (and need to) do better.

And, just for fun, some random pie charts for our Library!

Our young readers really love fiction! I also love to see our new adult books circulating so much.

Our staff’s language abilities include Spanish, French, and Amharic!

Have a lovely Pi Day, everyone! Celebrate with whatever form of Pi/pie you enjoy the most.

A version of this article was featured in the March 2023 Newsletter. Visit the Takoma Park Newsletter webpage to see the full list of past newsletters.