Posted by: Dave Richeson | July 1, 2009

## Ambigram: pie≠3.14

I thought the first comment on this article was funny. It says that pie and 3.14 are mirror images, if written in a certain way. Regular readers may recall that I had fun creating ambigrams a few months ago. This blog comment inspired me to whip up a quick ambigram exhibiting this symmetry.

I like this ambigram because it has two meanings. On the one hand $\pi\ne\text{pie}$ and also $\pi\ne 3.14$.

## Responses

1. I like this kind of visual. I posteda palindrone square on my blog some time ago. Check it out.

http://tinyurl.com/o8fdaa

• That’s great. Thanks for the link. I’ll send the link to my friend who is a Classics professor. He should be able to translate the words.

• Actually, I just looked and there is a wikipedia page on this very square. It has some neat translations. Cool.

• My friend Chris Francese (a classics professor here at Dickinson) shared with me a Latin poem in which the first line is repeated as the middle line and the last line, and it can also be read using the first letters or the last letters of each line!

The poem is here along with Chris’s discussion, translation, and reading of it.

2. You have to write the four a different way: https://plus.google.com/105555694224602845621/posts/XUw5x8Cz5K2