Pi Day provides sweet deals

March 18, 2011 — by Evaline Ju

In honor of Pi Day, students crowded around a small table on the quad steps on March 14, eager to purchase pieces of pie for the Math Club’s annual fundraiser.

In honor of Pi Day, students crowded around a small table on the quad steps on March 14, eager to purchase pieces of pie for the Math Club’s annual fundraiser.

Math Club members sifted through 24 boxes of Marie Callender’s apple, French apple, peach, lemon meringue, blueberry, cherry and chocolate satin pies. They cut each pie into eight pieces and sold each for $2 during tutorial and after school on Monday.

The price was lowered from $3 last year in hopes of attracting more customers.

“We learned from last year that people were turned away by the higher prices,” said club treasurer senior Kevin Mu. “People would rather pay less for a smaller piece of pie, even if it is less economical.”

Mu and sophomore club members Jackie Gu and Edward Dong found volunteers to help sell and negotiated with Marie Callender’s for discounts.

The French apple pie, similar to traditional apple pie but with a topping of cinnamon streusel crumbs, was the most popular among the students.

“The event was definitely successful, much to my relief, but due to some misunderstandings [about negotiated prices], we didn’t earn as much as we had originally calculated,” Dong said.

In total, the club sold 20 pies and made about $80 in profit. The money will be used to fund club competitions such as the Stanford Math Tournament and the American Mathematics Competition (AMC).

Selling pies for Pi Day has been a tradition for some schools. Club adviser and math teacher PJ Yim started a similar fundraiser while he taught at Leland High School. After arriving at Saratoga, he continued the event here.

“According to an urban legend, students at MIT had Pi Day celebrations exactly at 1:59 p.m. [pi=3.14159…],” Yim said. “Of course, they had pie.”

2 views this week