It's Mathematics Day, online this year

Mathematics is everywhere, in the models to predict the progress of a disease, such as the coronavirus pandemic, Sars-CoV-2, in the algorithms that allow you to use the internet, in video games: to remember its essential role in everyone's life. March International Mathematics Day is celebrated, with strictly virtual events, the hashtag # idm314 and the invitation to organize simple activities at home, from dancing inspired by numbers to card games. The initiative is of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) which proposed it to UNESCO on the day dedicated to the Greek Pi G.

The Day is thus accelerated on March 14 because it absorbs Pi Greco Day, the spontaneous initiative created to celebrate the most important of numbers, 3.14, whose handwriting correspond to the date of March 14 and which expresses the relationship between the circumference and the diameter of the circumference. It is a number used in many fields, from the calculation of the orbit of satellites to the forecast of the trend of shares on the stock exchange. "The celebration expands Pi Day to include the entire spectrum of mathematics," Roberto Natalini, director of the Institute for Calculus Applications "M. Picone" of the National Research Council (Iac Cnr) told ANSA.


The online lesson on mathematics by Roberto Natalini, organized by the Cnr for ANSA Scienza

Unfortunately due to the medical emergency due to the new coronavirus all "the celebrations have been canceled, even the one scheduled in Paris at the UNESCO headquarters, but - Natalini explains - online videos of the mathematicians involved will be published".

In Italy, the Italian Mathematical Union and the MaddMaths site are in the forefront of the initiative, and many videos will be published on the DropSea site, where the Carnival of Mathematics is also celebrated, a fixed appointment for the 14th of each month for mathematicians , but which on March 14 becomes a real online event. The leitmotif of virtual events will be 'mathematics is everywhere' because that is the theme chosen for 2020, but each year the theme will be changed to stimulate creativity.

"Mathematics is around us - observes Natalini - in the satellites that give us our position, in our cell phones, or in the algorithms that compress and decompress sounds and photos, in artificial intelligence, in the weather forecast possible thanks to the algorithms".