Happy π-Day!

What is Pi and why should I care?

Today is Pi-day. Why? Becuase it’s day 14 of the 3:rd month. And if you didn’t know and haven’t guessed it yet, Pi or the greek letter π (pronounced like pie) is a mathematical constant representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, approximated at 3,14.

Simple huh? No? Okay. Wikipedia uses this lovely gif to explain it:

So the circumference (the line that goes around the wheel) is 3.14 times bigger than the diameter (a straight line that goes through the center of the wheel).

So you use Pi to calculate anything that involves or even resembles a circle, globe, cylinder or whatever, no matter how big (like a planet) or how small (like a leprechaun’s hat) it is. It’s really awesome and without it, math is pretty much useless. (The last part about math being useless was a joke, I’m sorry to have to spell it out but the internet is full of angry nerds, so better safe than sorry)

Why are Pi and Memory Athletes such good friends?

Pi has an infinite amount of decimals. This makes it a very practical context for memory athletes. It means they can compete forever and ever in memorizing the most decimals. The current world record is 70030, set by Suresh Kumar Sharma in October 2015.
It took over 17 hours.

You can do it too!

Having this kind of memory is not a talent, but a skill. If you learn the techniques and put in the hours, you could memorize a crapload of stuff too. And you don’t need to limit yourself to pi. Check out our memory courses to learn more. Created by this guy: