It’s Pi Day once again (March 14 or 3.14) so you’re probably going to want to share all of your festivities with your friends, whether that’s eating pie, expressing pi to as many digits as you can stand, or just making puns all day long.
But while you can easily write the word pi and everyone knows what you’re talking about, it’s way cooler to write the symbol π. It’s one of the most recognizable symbols in mathematics but it’s not found on any standard keyboard. But there’s an easy way to type it:
- Press and hold the option key (next to Command).
- Type the letter “P”.
- Release/repeat.
That’s it. No matter what app you’re in or font you’re using, the Pi symbol will appear in the place of the “P.” It’s a little trickier on the iPhone and iPad. First, you need to head over to the Settings app, then General and Keyboard. Then tap Keyboards, Add New Keyboard, and select Greek. When you’re typing, click the globe icon in the bottom left until you see the Greek keyboard, and tap the letter P (top row, second from right). Tap the Globe icon again to return to the English keyboard.
Here are a few other fun pi facts to impress your friends:
- The Pi symbol is denoted by the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet representing the lowercase letter “P.”
- Welsh mathematician William Jones was the first person to use the symbol to express Pi.
- The longest extension of pi has been more than 62 trillion decimal places.
- In ancient Egypt, people believed the Giza pyramids were built on the principles of Pi.
- There’s an entire writing style called Pilish based on Pi’s mnemonic constraints.
