Restaurants circle Pi Day on their marketing calendars [Video]

Restaurants are offering promotions for Pi Day on March 14. | Photo: Shutterstock.

I have no memory of Pi Day being a thing when I was growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

A quick Google search tells me it was founded in 1988 by physicist Larry Shaw, then an employee of the Exploratorium, a San Francisco science museum and site of an inaugural celebration that included a circular parade and the consumption of fruit pies, according to History.com.

But the day, observed on March 14 in honor of the first three digits of pi (and, coincidentally, the birth date of Albert Einstein), became an official U.S. holiday in 2009.

I’m a lowly journalist, not a mathematician, so I’m not here to explain pi to you. But I did work for about a year as an early-morning baker at Chicago’s Hoosier Mama Pie Company, so I could explain pie-making to you. (Short story: It’s a lot of work, especially as …