Student Is World Class Pi Man
Thursday, March 16, 2006
A 15 year old student has managed to recite from memory almost 9000 digits of pi, making him one of the world's top pi reciters.
Gaurav Raja of Salem High School, Virginia managed to correctly recite the first 8,784 digits of pi. This is expected to rate him the number 3 pi memory man in the US and number 12 in the world.
Pi is an important mathematical constant which appears in many places including the ratio of various aspects of a circle. It has an infinite number of digits that never repeat. These begin 3.1415926...
Students often memorise the first few digits of pi using a mnemonic such as "May I have a large container of coffee" - the number of letters in each word gives each digit. Learning almost 9,000 digits clearly requires rather more sophisticated memory methods.
Raja was not impressed by his own feat, declaring himself "kind of disappointed" - he had hoped to set a new US record by memorising 10,790 digits of pi.
His teacher will be buying him an appropriate reward: a pepperoni pizza - a circular base topped with many small circular slices. Will Raja eat it or memorize it?
Technorati tags:strange weird
This is not a medical site
Nothing on this blog constitutes personal advice. Always discuss medical matters with your doctor.
