Pi Day Research Paper
Pi equals 3.141592...
On March 14, 2011 I was home sick from school. I was really looking forward to going because the kids were bringing in circular foods such as oreos and cakes because it was something called “pi day”. While I was home, I decided to find out exactly what pi day was. Upon doing a google search I found a video of a student memorizing the number pi and reciting it to 100 decimal places. I was mesmerized by this amazing talent. It seemed impossible to me they must have been reading them off a notecard behind the camera. Another quick search led me to the list of most digits memorized. Sure enough Lu Chao recited 67,890 digits of pi in front of a world record official over the course of 24 hours. This was a real thing and While …show more content…
The next day I printed out and laminated the first 500 digits with my laminator that I got for Christmas and took the sheet to school to keep on memorizing. I memorized another 60 that day to be at 125 digits in two days.
...1201....
For the last 3 months of school, I would systematically learn new digits 3 to 5 digits at a time. I would look for meaning in what looked like a vicious sea of endless numbers. For example, starting at the 243rd digit after the decimal place the string of numbers 1201 reminds me of my mom’s birthday which is on December first. Eventually I had learned the entirety of the 500 digits on the same laminated piece of paper that I printed out.
...250…
I had practiced the first 250 digits so many times that it was like the alphabet to me as I only knew the rhythm not the numbers. Whenever someone challenged me to prove my claim I would sound like a kindergarten class singing along with their ABC’s. Faced with the accusation that I was merely spewing out random strings of digits I challenge back by asking the person to say random number that quickly without breaking into a pattern. Turns out that is more difficult than just
On March 14, 2011 I was home sick from school. I was really looking forward to going because the kids were bringing in circular foods such as oreos and cakes because it was something called “pi day”. While I was home, I decided to find out exactly what pi day was. Upon doing a google search I found a video of a student memorizing the number pi and reciting it to 100 decimal places. I was mesmerized by this amazing talent. It seemed impossible to me they must have been reading them off a notecard behind the camera. Another quick search led me to the list of most digits memorized. Sure enough Lu Chao recited 67,890 digits of pi in front of a world record official over the course of 24 hours. This was a real thing and While …show more content…
The next day I printed out and laminated the first 500 digits with my laminator that I got for Christmas and took the sheet to school to keep on memorizing. I memorized another 60 that day to be at 125 digits in two days.
...1201....
For the last 3 months of school, I would systematically learn new digits 3 to 5 digits at a time. I would look for meaning in what looked like a vicious sea of endless numbers. For example, starting at the 243rd digit after the decimal place the string of numbers 1201 reminds me of my mom’s birthday which is on December first. Eventually I had learned the entirety of the 500 digits on the same laminated piece of paper that I printed out.
...250…
I had practiced the first 250 digits so many times that it was like the alphabet to me as I only knew the rhythm not the numbers. Whenever someone challenged me to prove my claim I would sound like a kindergarten class singing along with their ABC’s. Faced with the accusation that I was merely spewing out random strings of digits I challenge back by asking the person to say random number that quickly without breaking into a pattern. Turns out that is more difficult than just