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Wednesday Is Pi Day
mrbluze points us to an AP writeup on the upcoming Pi Day — 3-14 (which some will observe at 1:59 pm). The article notes: "[T]he world record [for reciting the number Pi] belongs to Chao Lu, a Chinese chemistry student, who rattled off 67,890 digits over 24 hours in 2005. It took 26 video tapes to submit to Guinness," and mentions in passing a Japanese mental health counselor who last fall recited 100,000 digits, but did not choose to submit proof to the record book.
So I won't get a Pi day, you insensitive clod!
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
And of course, the best way to celebrate is to eat PIE!
...a Japanese mental health counselor who last fall recited 100,000 digits, but did not choose to submit proof to the record book.
:)
Shouldn't that read "Mental health patient ?"
None the less, that is still very impressive. I wish I had a memory for that kind of thing.
Seems quite irrational to me.
Can you image if he gets a mail from Guinness saying "Sorry , you missed the record by 10. Or at least we think you did but tape 26 got chewed by the machine at digit 54166. Bad luck son, try again next year and next time use Memorex!"
Following the discussion about the date/time format, in continental Europe we proud ourselves in experiencing 13-3-7, or 1337...
Quoth Monty Python, "You know, there are many people in the country today who, through no fault of their own, are sane. Some of them were born sane. Some of them became sane later in their lives. It is up to people like you and me who are out of our tiny little minds to try and help these people overcome their sanity. You can start in small ways with ping-pong ball eyes and a funny voice and then you can paint half of your body red and the other half green and then you can jump up and down in a bowl of treacle going "squawk, squawk, squawk..." And then you can go "Neurhhh! Neurhhh!" and then you can roll around on the floor going "pting pting pting"..."
Well, it's one kind of counselling...
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There are plenty of memory techniques. Didn't you know there is a world championship in remembering things? See for instance http://www.worldmemorychampionship.com/ or http://www.worldmemorychallenge.com/.
If you want a tip, here's something a read in a book by a Norwegian memory world champion, Oddbjørn By:
*You probably want less locations, so you can visit the same one under different conditions. E.g. during day / night / rain / snow / heavy winds... we're down to 50,000 locations already!
I feel it's only appropriate to add that march 14th is also international steak and blowjob day
There is actually a word for this: piphilology, the art of coming up with mnemonics to remember pi. Like the poem in the parent post, these tend to be phrases or poems in which the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit of pi.
One common mnemonic (which I've seen attributed to Isaac Asimov) is "How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!" If you want to get really fancy, the Wikipedia entry lists a full sonnet, in more-or-less iambic pentameter:
Now I defy a tenet gallantly
Of circle canon law: these integers
Importing circles' quotients are, we see,
Unwieldy long series of cockle burs
Put all together, get no clarity;
Mnemonics shan't describeth so reformed
Creating, with a grammercy plainly,
A sonnet liberated yet conformed.
Strangely, the queer'st rules I manipulate
Being followéd, do facilitate
Whimsical musings from geometric bard.
This poesy, unabashed as it's distressed,
Evolvéd coherent - a simple test,
Discov'ring poetry no numerals jarred.
Admittedly, it's not a very good sonnet, but, hey, what do you want?
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
You're imagining things.
Karma: 2.71828182846 (Mostly due to small, fun pills)
Why oh why does everyone ignore the fact that 3.14 is Einstein's birthday too? :'(