Monday, March 14, 2011

Proof by Brownie

Today is a day that brings together two of my great loves: math and baking. In recent years, I've observed March 14 with a Pi Pie and Apple Pi Cupcakes, but this year I decided to deviate from the standard a little because I believe that, under a loose interpretation, Pi Day can be celebrated with any union of the mathematical and culinary arts.

Originally this was going to just be a picture blog, but as the number of pictures for the project accumulated, the feasibility of an interesting, readable picture blog diminished (inverse proportions!). And so I present...my first ever video blog! Given the amount of time it took to create and edit it (using my rudimentary iMovie skills), and the issues I ran up against at the very end when I tried to publish my final product on the web, it may also be my last ever video blog. But no matter - I'm really excited about the final product, and I don't even think you need to like math to enjoy it. I know some of you don't make a habit of clicking on embedded video, but I would strongly encourage you to click on this one, sound and all. Also, if you read my blog in a reader, you may have to actually visit my blog to get the video to work.

Enjoy!



(Incidentally, if you question the relevance of my Pi Day celebration to the true spirit of Pi Day, there actually is a connection, and it's not even a stretch - the very foundations of all of trigonometry, and a good portion of calculus, all depend upon the joint use of Pi and the Pythagorean theorem.)

8 comments:

Brady said...

Nice! Great video! It's got all the makings for a viral video: brownies, great math animations, and Jin.

Christa Jeanne said...

Brilliantly done, Amy!!! So clever - I may or may not have laughed out loud (including the "not a factorial" joke). Sadly, the video stopped playing for me halfway through - I'll have to come back and look at it again. Can you upload it to Facebook?

Abominable's Main Squeeze said...

That's just awesome!! Nicely done--Loved everything about it! Now, when's your next lecture?

Brian said...

Take a bow - that was awesome! The faux-filmstrip look, the hot jazz music, the stop-motion magic. Very, very fun.

Melanie Carbine said...

Can you please please please send me the video file so that I can share this with my math class? We just went over the Pythagorean theorem. They flipped their lids when I told them Pythagoreus was a real math dude. (Yes, I said it like that.)

KMDuff said...

now the question is what you think of the Tau manifesto and Tau day in June? It certainly isn't as fun as pie for pi.

Blissful Deviations said...

so clever! John and I enjoyed watching!

I also celebrated Pi Day-- helped organize a day at work for us all to bring Pie in. This looks like more fun though!

Melanie Carbine said...

It's Wacky Wednesday during Spirit Week, so we celebrated backwards pi day 41.3 :) They got most of my math jokes AND they sang my pi song for two other classes!