Happy Pi Day! In honor of upcoming Pi Day on March 14, this week’s episode features two stories about the nerdy celebration. Both of our storytellers will whisk you away on a journey filled with equal parts math and pastry, proving that whether you're calculating circumference or slicing into a sweet treat, there's always a story to be savored.
Part 1: After her colleagues make fun of the pie she brings on Pi Day, Desiré Whitmore decides she will never again celebrate Pi Day.
A Blaxican American and Southern California native, Dr. Desiré Whitmore, aka “LASERchick”, began her education in Community College and holds degrees in Physical Sciences, Chemical Engineering, and Chemical and Material Physics. Formerly, she has worked as a scientist in a national lab, a K-8 science curriculum developer, and a community college professor. She now works as the Exploratorium’s Staff Physicist Educator, where she bridges the gap between hands-on science, teacher education, and science communication.
Links to explore John Sims work from Desiré Whitmore’s story:
Pi Day is for Everyone article by John Sims
Tampa Bay Times article about Pi Day, by John Sims
Science News article about John Sims
John Sims Pi Day Anthem Youtube video
Part 2: Math teacher Theodore Chao goes all out for Pi Day at his school.
Theodore Chao is an associate professor of mathematics education at The Ohio State University. He loves using video and storytelling to get kids to share about how they really do math, not what someone told them they need to do. He is a former filmmaker, startup founder, and middle school teacher who now spends his time supporting teachers, writing articles, and using research funds to show that kids hold tremendous math power.
Episode Transcript
Part 1
March 14th 2015 at 9:26 AM. This date and time are memorable to me because they're the first seven digits of pi and it was my very first time celebrating Pi Day.
So I baked a pie, bring it to work. I set it on the table next to all my colleagues’ beautiful pies. It smells amazing in our office. 9:26 comes. It's time to start slicing into some pies. Not a single person cuts into my pie. Boo.
So, I was a little confused and kind of hurt, like what's going on? I don't understand. I really was putting in some work on this, you know?
Then I hear really loudly one of my colleagues, “Who on earth baked a square pie for Pi Day? What on earth were you thinking?”
Desiré Whitmore shares her story at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA in February 2023. Photo by Exploratorium.
Actually, I thought a lot about what kind of pie to make. I was like, “Okay, this is my first Pi Day. It has to be important.” And it's about the number pi, right? That's what we're celebrating. The number pi is represented by this Greek letter ‘π’ so I thought my pie needs to be Greek. I'm going to make spanakopita. Right? I need that spinach and that feta and that phyllo. It never occurred to me to make a spanakopita in any other shape than a square, because that's how I've always eaten it. So I never even thought about that.
I explained this to my colleagues. I say, “No, that's my pie. It's a spanakopita and it's Greek. It's the number pi.”
They don't care. The teasing actually just gets worse and they still don't eat my pie.
So then it's like, “Oh, Desiré, are you sure you're even a real physicist? How could you not know to make a round pie to celebrate Pi Day?”
And, normally, this is like general banter between friends. It's totally fine, right? But this was a little different for me. They were, like, attacking my validity as a physicist. This was my first job outside of a laboratory. I'm not the laser chick anymore. I'm like the curriculum chick. And I'm sitting here in this office, I'm normally, throughout my entire schooling, I was very often the only Black person or the only Latiné person or the only woman. And I was always the only Blaxican woman. Don't even get me started. So there was always something or someone to make me feel like I didn't belong, for one reason or another.
Oftentimes, my voice was unheard or silenced, my ideas were stolen or dismissed, and I was referred to as a talented minority woman scientist, which made me feel like I wasn't a real scientist at all.
But now, I'm at the Lawrence Hall of Science surrounded by teachers and scientists and education specialists and my voice is valued. My voice is not only heard, but it's amplified and I'm treated like a real scientist. I'm a talented physicist, no extra adjectives necessary. I felt like I had made it. I finally belonged somewhere. Until, that is, March 14th, 2015 at 9:26 AM.
What their teasing did was it reminded me of all of those feelings of exclusion, all of that imposter syndrome that I felt all throughout my schooling. And it made me just shut down. I was like, “Screw Pi Day. Pi Day is stupid. I don't care about no Pi Day. That's dumb. I'm not gonna celebrate that ever again.”
And I didn't. I do not celebrate Pi Day.
Desiré Whitmore shares her story at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA in February 2023. Photo by Exploratorium.
Three years later, I come to the Exploratorium as their staff physicist. The Exploratorium invented Pi Day. Physicist Larry Shaw invented Pi Day here in the '80s and, I don't know if you know this, but we get down on Pi Day. We have parades with live music, we have events, we have online programming and all kinds of activities for people of all ages. And of course, we have a lot of pie to eat.
And every year, I participate in the programming. I march in the parade with my little number. I eat the pie, because I'm going to eat some pie. But I don't have a connection with the holiday. So I do it because it's my job. I'm getting paid to be there on Pi Day. And if you're going to pay me to march in a parade, I'm going to do that. So, I do that, but I don't have this connection and I can't quite figure out why.
Then in 2021, in the middle of the global pandemic, we're all at home and I get this email in my inbox. It's like, “Hey, Exploratorium staff, we're gonna have a talk by this amazing artist named John Sims. He likes to blend math and art together.”
And I was like, “Yo, I'm so in. This sounds amazing.”
Also, there's a picture of John Sims in the email and he is a Black man, a Black mathematician artist. And, as I mentioned before, being the only Black person in this space, even a virtual one, can be extremely isolating and lonely. So I was going to this talk. I was going to make sure my camera was on, he was going to see me, I was going to ask questions. He was going to know that a Black scientist worked at this museum and was interested in his work.
So I did, and it was an amazing talk. I'm sitting on my couch in my pajamas, as you do, in 2021. I'm watching this talk and I am completely enthralled by everything that this man is saying. He's talking about this knot theory that he did where he actually made real knots with this artist. He's talking about fractals. He's talking about this Confederate flag thing that he did where he took the Confederate flag and changed the colors to black, green, and red, which are the colors of the Black nationalist flag. And he made a huge ruckus in the south, made people real mad. Yeah, it was pretty dope.
Then he gets to his magnum opus. It's called “SquareRoots: A Quilted Manifesto”. This is a vast body of work that includes music and poetry and hand sewn dresses and quilts, all dedicated to the number pi.
So he took the digits zero through nine, and he assigned each one of those a different color. Then he made a square spiral, starting with three in the center, and then one above it, and then four, one, five, nine, two, six, etc. All the way out, he worked with this Amish community to make a giant eight foot by eight foot quilt, which is beautiful. It looked like a giant mixed up Rubik's Cube.
I was completely stunned. And I'm like, “Wait a minute. Time out, time out, time out.” My heart is racing all fast in my chest and I'm like, “Wait, did that man just say that he made a square representation of pi? And he's being celebrated for it? Because I was shamed for making my square representation, for daring to make a square pi.”
So I was like, “I need to know this person.” And I felt really seen in a way that I wasn't before. And I was like, “I need to meet this guy.” But, you know, we're in a pandemic, so whatever.
A year later, the museums open. So, 2022, guess who comes to the museum to be an artist in residence? John Sims.
So he comes to the museum, and I'm like, “Yo, yo, yo. I need to meet you.”
And he was like, “Yo, I remember you from my Zoom call. I need to meet you too.”
So we actually got to meet here at the museum and it was fantastic. He's amazing. I tell him how much his work meant to me and how amazing his work is and how I resonated with so many different facets of it.
And then he tells me, “Well, you know, at my core, I'm really a community builder. I like to mix people up from different walks of life, put them together and see what kind of chemistry happens. So I'm putting together this event this weekend for Pi Day. And I'm going to have…”
Right? This is the day before Pi Day.
He's like, “…it's called Poetry, Pi and Pie.” You get it? It's really cute. And he's like, “I'm going to have myself on stage reciting my own poetry about the number pi. I'm going to have the poet laureate of San Francisco, Tongo Eisen Martin on stage. I'm going to have the first poet laureate from Oakland, Ayodele Nzinga on stage. And I'm going to have the founder of Pietisserie Pies, Jaynelle St. Jean on stage.”
And I'm like, “Ooh-hoo, that sounds amazing.”
And he was like, “Yes, trust me,” these are his words, “this is going to be the Blackest celebration of Pi Day that has ever existed.”
And I was like, “That sounds amazing and I would love to be there.”
And he goes, “Yes, you're gonna come and you're gonna meet all these amazing artists.”
Two days later, I get a phone call from John. This is like two days before the event. He calls me. He's like, “Desiré, I have a brilliant idea. I would be honored if the Exploratorium’s own Black woman physicist would join us on stage and share with us her reflections on pi. Yeah, right? That's great.”
I was like, “No. No, no, no, no, no. I don't have reflections on pi. I'm not that kind of physicist. I'm not very creative and I'm not good with words. I do math and I build lasers. Not a lot of pi involved there.”
And he was like, "Well, that's nonsense. I think that you will be great on stage, so I want you to be there."
And because of my complete awe and respect for this man, I was like, "Okay, I got you. I'll come and do it."
But then, the night before the event I have nothing. I don't have reflections on pi. I was like, "Maybe I could tell a story about pi, like the history of pi, but I'm not going to do that. That's not very Desiré."
And everybody does that already for Pi Day. Nobody wants to hear it again and again and again. Maybe some people do, but I'm not going to be the one to deliver it. And I'm not going to get up there and I'm not going to tell, like, "Oh, well, I use pi as a button on my calculator." I just don't have a connection to pi.
Then it hit me that what John was doing here was he was putting these particular people on stage together to see what came of it. He wanted to create this special space that was never going to be repeated, because those four people were going to be on stage. He wanted them to each get up there and present themselves and their work.
So, what he was asking me to do was not to get up there and recite some random story or some history of pi. He was asking me to be myself on stage. That was a lot.
I was like, "Okay."
But then it hit me, like, "Okay, so what he's asking me to do is just to share who I am in some way on that stage with those other beautiful artists." So I started thinking, "Well, why can't I do this? Why do I have this block? I don't have a connection to pi."
Then I realized, “It's the spanakopita incident.”
Desiré Whitmore shares her story at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA in February 2023. Photo by Exploratorium.
Spanakopita stopped me from caring about pi. I don't care about it. I've erased it from my memory. And so I decided that that's what I'm going to share, because that's the only reflection that I have on pi.
I was a little terrified because I haven't told many people that story, but I wasn't sure I was going to go in an audience, like a bunch of people. But I was like, “You know what? This is a chance to talk about imposter syndrome and to talk about the importance of representation and inclusion and STEM. And it was a chance for me to showcase and show them what joy and validity I got from learning about John Sims and his work.”
So I did it, but I was like, “I'm just gonna go to bed now.” Like, “It's fine. I'll wake up in the morning and go and tell this story.”
So, I got up in the morning. I come to the museum. I'm terrified. “Am I really going to tell this story? This is an awful story. Am I really going to get on stage to tell this to a bunch of strangers? Like, why didn't I write anything down? Do I even remember what happened? Oh, my God, what are you thinking?”
Then John Sims comes up to me and he's like, “Welcome. Let me introduce you to my friends.” And he takes me into the back, in the green room, where you guys don't get to go, and we get to talking about science and art and how they feed off of each other, and how they need each other to thrive. And all of my nervousness completely vanished. I felt this sense of belonging. I felt like I was supposed to be there.
I was not scared anymore. I got up on the stage and I started sharing my story and it was just natural, as natural as a square spanakopita. It felt really good. And I realized I was being creative, which I was afraid that I wasn't. I was being genuine, which I needed to be, always. And I was being vulnerable.
And I realized in that moment, on stage, telling this story, that what John Sims had given me was the opportunity to heal myself around this traumatic experience that I had. Now, he's given me this beautiful, joyous event to replace that one.
So, now, Pi Day 2023, eight years after March 14th, 2015, I'm going to celebrate Pi Day, like for real, for real celebrate. Yeah. I'm going to bake a spanakopita, my second spanakopita ever, in a square and I'm going to celebrate the life and work of John Sims and the change that he allowed me to make in myself.
Thank you.
Part 2
March 14th, Brooklyn, 2004. March 14th might not mean a lot to you, but to us middle school math teachers March 14th is everything. Some of us know this as Pi Day. Finally, a chance to throw a party and celebrate the nerdy math geek culture that I wanted my kids to have a taste of, Pi Day.
And I go all out for Pi Day. 300 fresh pies from bakeries all over Brooklyn donated and delivered to my school. Cafeteria staff unlock, ready to slice up all those pies so that each and every single kid got a fresh slice of pie on Pi Day so that they always remember March 14th. 3-1-4 is a mathematical constant pi.
We have a day full of games, costumes, songs and a digits of pi memorization contest. And I also made sure that every staff member and every parent who helped us out gets to bring home a fresh pie, because that's how we do. Like Biggie reminded us, “Spread love, it's the Brooklyn way.”
I love events like Pi Day because it allowed me to see different versions of my students that I might not see in class. For instance, Jakayla, who, in her signature black trucker hat and constant application of lipgloss might be seen as a detached kid, but she was one of those sneaky math lovers. She was the kid I looked to when my lessons were going south. Sitting in the back, she had this way of getting the rest of the class back on track just by asking a question or showing her interest in math. If she didn't get it then I knew the lesson was going over the kids’ heads.
Sometimes you meet someone whose presence just lights up the room. I mean on the days Jakayla was absent, I noticed how different the tone of the whole class changed because her light, her energy wasn't there. She was always willing to go to the board whether she knew how to solve a problem or not and just because she was willing to try and not be scared to make a mistake in front of the rest of the class. She showed all of us that math isn't about brilliance, it's about trying.
And I knew she had her heart set on Brooklyn Tech High School to be the first kid in her family to go to college. And I realized my role was to help get her there.
But on Pi Day, I saw an even more engaged version of Jakayla. She had put together a Pi Day step crew and, for real, they performed a whole Pi Day step routine. Clapping and stomping in unison, shouting out things like, “Circumference over diameter, ratio. [claps hands]” I still remember just falling in love with the geekiness of it all.
Now, the one part that I hated the most about being a middle school math teacher, grading. Oh, how I hated grading. Grading is this horrible exercise in which you get reminded by just how bad of a teacher you are, just a constant eroding of your confidence that you have any impact whatsoever as a teacher. So, of course, I always procrastinated my grading until the very last minute.
Grading things on Sunday afternoon, usually with the TV on, beer and pizza. Lots of delicious greasy Brooklyn pizza. And I'd spend my Sunday afternoons in this pizza-and-beer pit of grading shame.
One of the reasons grading for my middle school students was so stressful was because in New York at the time, there existed this controversial tiered system of high schools. As an eighth grader, you have to apply to get into one of the eight top-tier specialized high schools. You have to take a pretty competitive test in order to get into any of these schools. And some of them look at your grades and your portfolio too.
So for my eighth graders, like Jakayla, getting into one of these high schools is a pretty surefire way to get into college, so their math grades really matter. And all this is happening while I'm trying to cover a relentless curriculum. The grades, the high school applications, the curriculum, all of it revolves around this big lie that we all choose to believe. We pretend that math and intelligence are the same thing. Like if you do well in math you're smart and if you don't do well in math you're dumb.
I know I hate to admit this, but even as a math teacher I sometimes internalize this, carrying around trauma because of something that happened in middle school for myself that made me feel like I wasn't a true mathematician.
So on Monday, hungover because of another Sunday flurry of drunk, greasy grading, I started the class by walking around the classroom placing these tests down on each kid's desk as they were settling in. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it because we've got to get to our lesson because we have to hit the scope and sequence calendar so we can cover everything for this quiz on Friday so we can hit the unit test in two weeks. Just keep up, just keep up, just keep up.
And I hear a wail.
I look up. Jakayla is in full ugly cry, bawling at the back of the room, huge sobs, gulps, tears. And I don't know what to do. I'm so hungover. I just keep passing out tests just I got to get them to every kid.
Other kids come over and console Jakayla, and then I remember. When I was writing those grades down in my grade book last night, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Jakayla got a 65. Oh, she failed the test. That's why she's bawling.
I was paralyzed. Last week, we just had a mandatory professional development about how none of us, especially the male teachers, should ever have a student with us in a room with the door closed and how we should never ever, ever, ever reach out to touch or initiate physical contact with any student, particularly our female students. I don't know what to do.
I wish I could have consoled her. I wanted to sit down and say, “Hey, all these tests, all these applications, all this homework, it's all part of a lie. None of it reflects the fact that I see you. I see your brilliance, Jakayla.” And I wanted to give her a hug and let her know it's going to be okay.
But I didn't. I froze. I think I grabbed a box of tissues and put it on her desk and say, “Let's talk about this later.”
I turned around, hung over, turned off the lights, turned on that stupid loud projector so I could start today's lesson and I just went on teaching.
I tried so hard to make math learning fun and yet I destroyed one of my favorite students. I realized I was a fool for believing that I was the cool teacher that kids love. All the fun activities, that whole celebration of Pi Day, making sure every kid gets a slice of pie, it was just a mask covering up that I was actually part of the problem.
Here was Jakayla, a bright young woman from Brooklyn who learned that you can do well in school and you can make something. And she made everyone around her better. But because of some arithmetic errors, I think she misremembered which way the inequality sign is supposed to go when you divide by a negative coefficient. Small stuff like that. Because of that, she failed my unit test, which knocked her out of contention of getting into her dream high school.
And now, the system told her that she didn't belong in the club of who gets to do math. I had reinforced the stereotype that women of color cannot engage in mathematics. I had become a teacher because I vowed to challenge these stereotypes, because I vowed to break through this gatekeeping. But instead, I did the same crap. I reinforced the same trauma.
Jakayla was never the same after that. She stopped engaging. She stopped raising her hand. She stopped being the kid I looked to when my lessons were falling apart. She never went to the board again. Not only did Jakayla fail my test, I failed Jakayla.
I left teaching middle school at the end of that year. I was so torn. I knew something was wrong. Why were such amazing kids getting pushed out of the system?
I learned that trying to be a cool math teacher and making math fun, it was just a band aid solution and not the cure to a real problem. It's not about making math fun. It's about recognizing the brilliance that so many kids have in dismantling oppressive systems.
And March 14th, it's still a trip for me. Every year my students all over Facebook, all over Instagram they find me and they always flood my feed with pictures of pie, lots and lots of pie. I get Happy Pi Day messages all day long, but I've never gotten a message from Jakayla. She's never wished me a happy Pi Day. And every Pi Day I still think about her.