Behold, fellow math nerds, May the 4th is over, today is Square Root Day (05/05/25)! That glorious, rare alignment of numbers when the month and the day are both the square root of the last two digits of the year. It only happens nine times per century, which makes it rarer than a shiny Pokémon or a peaceful comment thread on the internet.

This numerical nerdfest was dreamt up by Ron Gordon, a driver’s ed teacher from Sequoia High in Redwood City, California, because when he wasn’t teaching teens to parallel park, he was clearly plotting how to make the Gregorian calendar more entertaining.

So how does one properly celebrate this most irrational of holidays? Sure, math teachers will tell you to calculate square roots all day, but come on. That’s like giving someone a TI-84 for their birthday and not even programming Snake onto it. We can do better. Here’s a few things you can do to celebrate.

-Cut root vegetables (carrots, turnips, radishes) into squares
-Make a square carrot cake
-Play a game of Square Root Clock.
-Listen to square root poetry (From Harold and Kumar):

I fear that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

Has quietly come waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

Whatever you do, be sure to make it square. Make it radical. Make it math-magical!

The next “Square Root Day” will occur on June 6, 2036 (6/6/36).

[Picture Source: Alan Sheffield on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)]