Reading the Comics, March 14, 2021: Pi Day Edition

I was embarrassed, on looking at old Pi Day Reading the Comics posts, to see how often I observed there were fewer Pi Day comics than I expected. There was not a shortage this year. This even though if Pi Day has any value it’s as an educational event, and there should be no in-person educational events while the pandemic is still on. Of course one can still do educational stuff remotely, mathematics especially. But after a year of watching teaching on screens and sometimes doing projects at home, it’s hard for me to imagine a bit more of that being all that fun.

But Pi Day being a Sunday did give cartoonists more space to explain what they’re talking about. This is valuable. It’s easy for the dreadfully online, like me, to forget that most people haven’t heard of Pi Day. Most people don’t have any idea why that should be a thing or what it should be about. This seems to have freed up many people to write about it. But — to write what? Let’s take a quick tour of my daily comics reading.

Agnes: 'Today we do that 'Daylight Savings Time' thing again.' Trout: 'Do we add an hour or subtract an hour?' Agnes: 'Um ... good question. Let's see. 'Spring around, fall over.' Trout: 'That makes *no* sense.' Agnes: 'You're right. Hey! It's also pie day!' Trout: 'Now *that* makes sense!'
Tony Cochran’s Agnes for the 14th of March, 2021. My essays exploring something mentioned in Agnes appear at this link.

Tony Cochran’s Agnes starts with some talk about Daylight Saving Time. Agnes and Trout don’t quite understand how it works, and get from there to Pi Day. Or as Agnes says, Pie Day, missing the mathematics altogether in favor of the food.

A numeral 3 stands in front of a mirror and says, 'Hope this works.' He swallows several pills. Beside the 3 appear a decimal point, and then a 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, and so on. The 3 says 'Whoa!' while looking at the decimal train as the reader finally sees the prescription was for 'Pi-Agra'.
Scott Hilburn’s The Argyle Sweater for the 14th of March, 2021. Essays featuring some discussion of The Argyle Sweater are at this link.

Scott Hilburn’s The Argyle Sweater is an anthropomorphic-numerals joke. It’s a bit risqué compared to the sort of thing you expect to see around here. The reflection of the numerals is correct, but it bothered me too.

Lupin, white cat, reporting: 'It's National Pie Day! [ Handed a bulletin ] Excuse me?' A chart shows a circle, diameter, circumference, and radius. Puck, black cat, interrupts, wearing a T-shirt with pi on it: 'It's Pi Day! When folks celebrate the mathematical constant pi! Not to be confused with the pastry dessert pie! Though people celebrate it by baking and eating pies.' (See The Woman and her child rolling out pie crust in the kitchen.) 'Which is very confusing! Just like math ... ' Agnes, mouse: 'No way, Puck! Check it out!' Agnes shows the pi = C / D formula on a card, and with some other mice demonstrates: 'Measure the circumference of the pie with a ribbon. Now, measure the diameter across and cut the ribbon each time. You should be left with three equal ribbons and a little extra! 3.14, that's pi!' Puck looks at the pie, with a slice cut out: 'Hey, where did this radius-slice go?' Agnes: 'OUR WORK HERE IS DONE!' Other mouse: 'MATH RULES!'
Georgia Dunn’s Breaking Cat News for the 14th of March, 2021. I don’t seem to have ever discussed this strip before. This essay, and any future ones mentioning Breaking Cat News, should be at this link.

Georgia Dunn’s Breaking Cat News is a delightful cute comic strip. It doesn’t mention mathematics much. Here the cat reporters do a fine job explaining what Pi Day is and why everybody spent Sunday showing pictures of pies. This could almost be the standard reference for all the Pi Day strips.

Jason: 'Today's 3-14.' Dad: 'So it is.' Jason: 'I don't have a watch. Can you let me know when it's exactly 1:50 ... ' Dad: 'I'll try.' Jason: 'And 26 secones ... and 535 milliseconds ... and 897 microseconds ... and 932 nanoseconds ... and 384 picoseconds ... does your watch do femtoseconds?' Dad: 'There's such a thing as taking Pi day too seriously, son.
Bill Amend’s FoxTrot for the 14th of March, 2021. Essays that have some mention of FoxTrot are gathered at this link.

Bill Amend’s FoxTrot is one of the handful that don’t mention pie at all. It focuses on representing the decimal digits of π. At least within the confines of something someone might write in the American dating system. The logic of it is a bit rough but if we’ve accepted 3-14 to represent 3.14, we can accept 1:59 as standing in for the 0.00159 of the original number. But represent 0.0015926 (etc) of a day however you like. If we accept that time is continuous, then there’s some moment on the 14th of March which matches that perfectly.

Frazz: 'The ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter is commonly rounded off to 3.14 and iconically represented by pi. Which linguistically sounds like 'pie'. Hence 3-14 is Pi Day.' Caulfield, walking a dog: 'Everybody knows that, Frazz. What's your point?' Frazz: 'Is it a language gag or a math gag?' Caulfield: 'Oh, I see. Wait for it.' Frazz, eyes bugged out and covering his nose: 'Good Lord. Was that you?' Caulfield: 'I fed cheese pizza to the dog. Now it's a biology gag.'
Jef Mallett’s Frazz for the 14th of March, 2021. Essays inspired by something in Frazz should be gathered at this link.

Jef Mallett’s Frazz talks about the eliding between π and pie for the 14th of March. The strip wonders a bit what kind of joke it is exactly. It’s a nerd pun, or at least nerd wordplay. If I had to cast a vote I’d call it a language gag. If they celebrated Pi Day in Germany, there would not be any comic strips calling it Tortentag.

Heart, to her friends: 'I do love a good pie. But why are we doing this again?' Kat: 'It's Pi Day!' Heart: 'Which is?' Kat start stalking in long swirly dialogue all around an extra-wide panel explaining pi and even reciting digits. Heart: 'Mhmm. Right. Gotcha.'
Steenz’s Heart of the City for the 14th of March, 2021. Essays which mention Heart of the City — which until summer last year was written by Mark Tatulli, and is now by Steenz — are at this link.

Steenz’s Heart of the City is another of the pi-pie comics. I do feel for Heart’s bewilderment at hearing π explained at length. Also Kat’s desire to explain mathematics overwhelming her audience. It’s a feeling I struggle with too. The thing is it’s a lot of fun to explain things. It’s so much fun you can lose track whether you’re still communicating. If you set off one of these knowledge-floods from a friend? Try to hold on and look interested and remember any single piece anywhere of it. You are doing so much good for your friend. And if you realize you’re knowledge-flooding someone? Yeah, try not to overload them, but think about the things that are exciting about this. Your enthusiasm will communicate when your words do not.

Two mathematicians at a wide chalkboard have written out digits of pi. One says, 'There's always room for more Pi.' The other, at the right end says, 'Or not.' In the corner the Reality Check Squirrel holds up a slice of pie and offers, 'Happy Pi Day!' to the right-side scientist.
Dave Whamond’s Reality Check for the 14th of March, 2021. Essays featuring something discussed in Reality Check are at this link.

Dave Whamond’s Reality Check is a pi-pie joke that doesn’t rely on actual pie. Well, there’s a small slice in the corner. It relies on the infinite length of the decimal representation of π. (Or its representation in any integer base.)

A man digs his way through a deep snow heap to a piece of pie in a glass-covered jar. Caption: 'Sunday! Mr Lux digs out of snow on his way to pie day!' s
Michael Jantze’s Studio Jantze for the 15th of March, 2021. This is a new comic so there’s no old essays about it. But this and any future essays about Studio Jantze should appear at this link.

Michael Jantze’s Studio Jantze ran on Monday instead, although the caption suggests it was intended for Pi Day. So I’m including it here. And it’s the last of the strips sliding the day over to pie.

But there were a couple of comic strips with some mathematics mention that were not about Pi Day. It may have been coincidence.

Sandra Bell-Lundy's Between Friends for the 14th of March, 2021. This and a bunch of other appearances of Venn Diagrams should be gathered under the Between Friends tag here.

Sandra Bell-Lundy’s Between Friends is of the “word problem in real life” kind. It’s a fair enough word problem, though, asking about how long something would take. From the premises, it takes a hair seven weeks to grow one-quarter inch, and it gets trimmed one quarter-inch every six weeks. It’s making progress, but it might be easier to pull out the entire grey hair. This won’t help things though.

Bucky, cat: 'I've been thinkin' about the whole infinite monkey thing lately.' Satchell, dog: 'You lost me.' Bucky: 'It's the theory that if you get a load of monkeys on typewriters, one will accidentally type Shakespeare at some point.' Satchell: 'Mm-hm, mm-hm.' Bucky: 'Well, the whole theory is flawed. 'Infinite' is too many monkeys. Over 8 monkeys and you're running into discipline and hygiene issues. And who's gonna read infinite monkey scripts? Some chimp could hvae written the next Da Vinci code, but newsflash: he's eating that script before you ever see it. Here's what you do: you buy a $2 bag of nuts, you go trap yourself some squirrels. You put them on word processors --- WITH SPELLCHECK --- and you shoot for a 'Two and a Half Men' script ... you pocket the infinite monkey allocation money, sell the script, and retire to Hawaii.' Satchell: 'So now it's finite squirrels at word processors? ... I'm still lost.' Bucky: 'Never mind. You got two dollars?'
Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy for the 14th of March, 2021. Essays mentioning Get Fuzzy are gathered at this link.

Darby Conley’s Get Fuzzy is a rerun, as all Get Fuzzy strips are. It first (I think) ran the 13th of September, 2009. And it’s another Infinite Monkeys comic strip, built on how a random process should be able to create specific outcomes. As often happens when joking about monkeys writing Shakespeare, some piece of pop culture is treated as being easier. But for these problems the meaning of the content doesn’t count. Only the length counts. A monkey typing “let it be written in eight and eight” is as improbable as a monkey typing “yrg vg or jevggra va rvtug naq rvtug”. It’s on us that we find one of those more impressive than the other.

And this wraps up my Pi Day comic strips. I don’t promise that I’m back to reading the comics for their mathematics content regularly. But I have done a lot of it, and figure to do it again. All my Reading the Comics posts appear at this link. Thank you for reading and I hope you had some good pie.

I don’t know how Andertoons didn’t get an appearance here.

Author: Joseph Nebus


4 thoughts on “Reading the Comics, March 14, 2021: Pi Day Edition”

    1. Yeah; that’s one that hasn’t happened before, not exactly. Pi Day in 2014 was a Saturday which would reasonably have counted. Pi Day in 2010 was a Sunday, but as far as I can tell nobody was observing it.

      Maybe in 2027, when Pi Day will coincide with the time change next (unless those rules change) we’ll see more comic strips using the coincidence.


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