So, I have a degree in physics, but this irritates me too! Because a fair number of programming examples involve math that is fun for math geeks, which I also am not even though I'm comfortable with math, and not at all the kind of math that physical sciences types do. I don't give a shit about Pascal's triangle and examples like that frustrate me for similar reasons! So, basically what I'm saying is I feel your pain.

I like your program! :D Once you learn about indexing you could have it check if the last 3 characters of the input are "pie", which is not a perfect solution (someone could enter "pies" and get the wrong response) but it might be heading in the right direction?