Memoring the digits of Pi

Even long before computers have calculated π, memorizing a record number of digits became an obsession for some people.

• The current world record is 100,000 decimal places, set on October 3, 2006 by Akira Haraguchi.
• The previous record (83,431) was set by the same person on July 2, 2005 , and the record previous to that (43,000) was held by Krishan Chahal.

There are many ways to memorize π, including the use of piems, which are poems that represent π in a way such that the length of each word (in letters) represents a digit. Here is an example of a piem: How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature (or: of course), after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. Notice how the first word has 3 letters, the second word has 1, the third has 4, the fourth has 1, the fifth has 5, and so on.

The Cadaeic Cadenza contains the first 3834 digits of π in this manner. Piems are related to the entire field of humorous yet serious study that involves the use of mnemonic techniques to remember the digits of π, known as piphilology. See Pi mnemonics for examples. In other languages there are similar methods of memorization. However, this method proves inefficient for large memorizations of pi. Other methods include remembering patterns in the numbers (for instance, the year 1971 appears in the first fifty digits of pi).