The team running Bing’s user interface and functionality tend to be the more lively group within Microsoft, often using celebrated holidays or events as opportunities to share their particular flare on the home and results pages of Bing. National Pi Day has been another chance for the Bing team to interact with its users and make use of the results page for some relevant holiday celebration. Pi Day, for those who may be unaware, is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant, Pi.
Traditionally observed on March 14 for obvious reasons (3.14), fans are encouraged to share their appreciation through various activities, some that include eating an actual pie or dressing up as well regarded genius Albert Einstein, who happens to share a birthdate of March 14th. Some schools and other educational institutions also take the chance to finagle some actual mathematically-based education into the day’s celebration and it’s looking like the Bing team is following that lead.
In honor of this day, and to help students of different ages learn and practice mathematics in an immersive way, the Bing Education team developed a number of interactive answers. These answers range from a basic multiplication tables to a more advanced polynomial equation solver. It’s also another Bing milestone in our continuing effort to make fun, interactive tools to support students as they learn math and science.”
The Pi-inspired mathematical tools includes a fully-functional grapher, information on Geometry-relates shapes, multiplication table, number converter and a polynomial equation solver. Anecdotally, I used to have to buy a $200 graphing calculator to get this level of specificity for my math classes, now, students have this at their fingertips, for free.
As the Bing announces the new built-in mathematical features, there is no mention as to whether or not these new settings and perks will remain in the search results as mainstays. We’ll check back tomorrow to see if the Bing team implements this functionality permanently, thus giving Bing users just more options when exploring Microsoft’s search engine over that of Google’s or others.
Happy Pi Day to anyone who is observing today!
