[Tfug] Happy Pi Day everyone!

[Bowie J. Poag]

In this episode of Confessions Of A Geek:

I, Bowie, won a contest at work not too long ago, for being able to know 
and correctly recite Pi to the most digits. I managed to pull off 83. :)

Which looks like so:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986

This scared the living hell out of my coworkers, which was worth the 
effort in and of itself. :)  The best strategy I figured out was to come 
up with a series mnemonic devices strung together, which has the added 
benefit of allowing you to recite all the digits in reverse as well, 
should you lose your place. It's all a matter of viewing thew numbers as 
a story. If you forget a piece, all you need to do is remember the 
ending, and then walk backward in the story until you can repair the 
missing piece you originally forgot.  Its been a while since I did it, 
but I still remember the first two dozen or so digits.. Past that, I can 
remember small chunks, but neither accurately nor in their correct 
order.. Off the top of my head:

3.1415926535897932384626433832.......197169399..

i.e. "3." a[1415926535]  b[8979323] c[846264] d[33832] ..... n[197169399]...

a = Just memorized this piece brute force. Don't know why, but I 
couldn't think of any better way.
b= '89 and '79 Mazda 323.
c= A 5-digit palindrome involving three magic numbers (64, 2, and 
8)...fairly easy to remember visually.
d= "33832" I remembered as a zipcode to nowhere. (it's not a valid 
zipcode in real life, which gives it a good disctinction mentally)
...
n = I remembered this as "In both 1971 and 69, a loaf of bread cost 
$3.99"... which is a false statement, which helps me remember it.

I remember reading something somewhere that after the 200th digit or so, 
Pi becomes superfluous because at that point, you have a granularity 
higher than the smallest base distance in physics (1 angstrom?) ...In 
English, with that degree of precision, you could plot the location of 
every particle in the universe without overlap. It hurts my head. :) I 
don't recall the exact description, but it's something like that.

Cheers,
Bowie


Earl wrote:

>-- "Angus Scott-Fleming" <angussf at geoapps.com> wrote:
>On 14 Mar 2007 at 21:36, Jude Nelson  wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I know it's a bit geeky, but what the heck.  Happy Pi Day everyone!
>>3.141592653589....
>>    
>>
>
>Wait until 2015/2016 for another two digits ;-)
>
>Just when I signed up for Social Security today, life has taken on NEW
>MEANING!!
>
>Earl
>
>
>
>
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