`\pi` Day 2020 Art — Digits, poetically.

On March 14th celebrate `\pi` Day. Hug `\pi`—find a way to do it.

For those who favour `\tau=2\pi` will have to postpone celebrations until July 26th. That's what you get for thinking that `\pi` is wrong. I sympathize with this position and have `\tau` day art too!

If you're not into details, you may opt to party on July 22nd, which is `\pi` approximation day (`\pi` ≈ 22/7). It's 20% more accurate that the official `\pi` day!

Finally, if you believe that `\pi = 3`, you should read why `\pi` is not equal to 3.

Welcome to this year's celebration of `\pi` and mathematics. Among the chaos of CORVID-19, this year `\pi` Day celebrations are short poetic emissions I call “piku”. They are brief pauses for the time.

Start by reading how piku are constructed and then browse submitted piku. Consider participating by submitting your own piku. All you need is a pen and a few (small) words. Very therapeutic.

But if the words here don't help, immerse yourself in my coronavirus art. It's quite catching.

If you enjoy poetry and words, see how I convert spam into poems in the style of ee cummings and if you like to see words arrange on page, look through my typographic art.

You may know the haiku (俳句) as a short three line poem whose lines traditionally have 5, 7 and 5 syllables (specifically, morae or phonetic sounds).

On a recent trip to Japan I was looking to my environment for inspiration for this year's `\pi` Day. I also really wanted a scheme that would allow people to contribute to the art so that everyone could be both a participant and an audience.

After scribbling for a little bit (or a long while), I came up with the idea of a piku (`\pi`ku, パイク). Analogously to a haiku, the piku is poem whose structure is constrained. But in this case, the constraints are the digits of `\pi` itself.

The piku

The simplest piku is a 3 phrase poem with 3, 1 and 4 syllables, respectively. Perhaps the most trivial piku is just the list of digits.

Specifically, Haiku count the number of phonetic sounds which isn't always the same as syllables. For example, the word "any" has two such sounds: a-ny.

If you're interested in how the counting of sounds is done in Japanese, read about marking time and beats in Haiku.

But a more fun one would be

Longer words can be used, of course. But watch out for the lines that require a single syllable.

You can use hyphenation to work around the syllable count.

plural of piku is piku

Piku is singulare tantum—its plural form is the same as its singular.

This is because its inspiration is the haiku and in Japanese nouns do not have different singular and plural forms,

Longer piku

In general, a piku may have more than 3 lines. This reflects the fact that the digits of `\pi` do not terminate.

The endless piku is just waiting to be written. Well... started, at least.

Handling zeros

The digit zero is a line with no syllables and corresponds to a compulsory verse break. But because the first zero in `\pi` is at digit 33, you wouldn't see a verse break for a while.

Therefore, you're free to introduce a verse break anywhere in the piku (this does not use up a digit). For example,

Generalizing the piku — the nku

Any number, `n`, has its own nku. The rules for its construction are the same: each digit generates a line with corresponding number of syllables.

For example, the haiku is an nku for `n = 575`.

The year of your birth has an nku—you might want to try composing one to reflect on your origins.

In fact, any date (e.g. DDMMYYYY) can be made into an nku. This year's `\pi` date in this format is 14032020 and here's one possible nku.

The trailing zero in the number creates a verse break at the end of a poem. This can be ignored or used to generate a blank line if the poem is set with other text on the page.