Why?
A high school student Tuesday recited 8,784 digits of Pi — the non-repeating and non-terminating decimal — likely placing him among the top Pi-reciters in the world.
Gaurav Rajav, 15, had hoped to recite 10,790 digits and set a new record in the United States and North America. But he remembered enough to potentially place third in national and North American Pi recitation and 12th in the world.
. . .
Gaurav began memorizing Pi while a student in Gooding’s class. Gooding holds the competition every year, and said she expected students to learn about 40 digits. Gaurav recited nearly 2,990 the first time.
Whew, close call–but the North American Pi record survives for another day.
If there’s a practical application we need to instill in the youth of America, it’s a full knowledge of pi. Just the other day, I was cycling through a remote area of eastern Roane County and my mind happened upon a geometric problem. I had the radius of a circle and needed to calculate the circumference. My brain went into meltdown mode, and for the life of me I couldn’t come up with the seventh and eighth digits of pi. I came to a house and stopped to ask if the residents knew, but no one was home. So there I stood like an idiot, banging my head against a tree trying to remember it was 3.1415926. Duh.
Parents, don’t let this nightmare happen to your kids. Make sure they memorize at least 40 digits of pi. If you really love them, I’d shoot for 100, just to be safe.