ST. GEORGE — When a person wants to describe something that is simple, there is an old adage that goes “It’s as easy as pie.” But as anybody who has ever baked a pie or say, calculated the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter can attest, it really isn’t that simple.

Tuesday is National Pi Day, a burgeoning national holiday that celebrates math or, more specifically, it celebrates the date on the calendar (3/14) that matches the mathematical constant that is the best approximation of the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter (3.14). Have a I lost you yet?

According to John Gardella, a math teacher in the Washington County School District, Pi has been known in the math and science world for thousands of years. Mathematicians as far back as Archimedes, the Greek inventor, astronomer and mathematician, knew of Pi, Gardella said.

With today’s super computers, Pi can be calculated to over a trillion digits beyond its decimal point, and there are clubs that ambitious math lovers can join for memorizing as many digits of Pi as possible, including the 1,000 Pi Club, Gardella said.

National Pi Day’s beginnings are placed in the 1980s when physicist Larry Shaw began the celebration, but it wasn’t until 2009 that it was officially recognized as a national holiday, according to a previous St. George News report.

Though math fanatics like Gardella profess a unique love for the number Pi, our “On the Hunt” team just wanted to know where we could find the best pie to eat. After all, pies are circles.

In an informal poll, we asked our Facebook friends where the best place to get a pie in St. George was. When the votes came in, it was unanimously decided that we needed to visit both Croshaw’s Pies and Veyo Pies to tease our palates.

Both Croshaw’s and Veyo pies have decades-long traditions of serving up tasty pies in Southern Utah, and both are known by pie enthusiasts throughout the county and beyond.

For our unofficial taste test we bought the most popular pies from each location – sour cream lemon from Croshaw’s and banana cream from Veyo – and shared them with our office staff.

And the verdict? Pie is good; it’s really, really good. I could eat about 3.14 more pieces.

For St. George News, I’m Hollie On the Hunt.

About the series “On the Hunt”

On the Hunt is a series dedicated to finding the best of the best in Southern Utah. From that thing called “Pho” to the best thrift store finds and beyond, On the Hunt will be bringing you our favorite finds. What do you want us to find? Tell us in the comments.

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