Neil deGrasse Tyson Thinks You’re All Wrong For Celebrating Pi Day Today

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Math nerds and science buffs the world over are celebrating Pi Day today, a most unusual (but tasty) of holidays celebrated every March 14th. (Here’s a non-nerd explainer for the uninitiated.) However, this year’s event was made even more unique by an alignment between the date (3/14/15) and the time (9:26). Added together, the numbers read out as 3.1415926 — the first eight numbers of Pi.

Too bad Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks we’re all a bit silly for celebrating at all. Why? I’ll let Neil take this one:

Only the United States and, to varying degrees, Canada use this Gregorian form of calendar dating. Everyone else writes the day first, which would portray today’s date as 14/3/15. Nothing Pi about that.

Naturally, Tyson’s tweet drew the kind of ire that only social media can produce. He granted one alternative position for a moment, but quickly shot it down:

Despite his Sheldon Cooper-ish approach to the nerdy holiday, Tyson eventually relented. How? By tweeting more trivia about Pi and Pi Day, that’s how:

He also threatened to do the impossible:

You still tried to ruin Pi Day, Neil. I’m just going to go and eat all these pies I made with my friends because (1) pies are delicious, and (2) AMERICA F*CK YEAH.

(Via Neil deGrasse Tyson)

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