Monday, January 08, 2007

The 100 "Pie" Challenge

I took it upon myself this past winter to memorize 100 decimal places of my favorite mathematical constant: pi. It started out as a joke when I downloaded 4 million decimal places of pi on an impulse. Then I was really inspired by how far human technology has come over the last few millenia. The average desktop computer like the one that you're probably reading this on right now can calculate millions of decimal places of pi. The least I could do to honor the monumental struggle that humanity has faced along the way to attain such technological prowess was to take 100 digits of pi and make it a part of me.

In 2005, a Japanese man recited over 83,000 digits of pi from memory. That's incredible. But my curiosity ends at the first 100 digits. I'm just happy to know that we possess the technology to crank out trillions of digits of pi.

Currently, I'm at 74:

You better believe it when I say that I wrote that from memory. Tomorrow, I'm finishing the rest. Good night, Seattle - or morning, the way some people see it.

// Honeyroot - Falling


Nate Fico said...

I would have to say, I doubt the average computer can crank out a trillion digits of PI!

On second thought, check out this screen shot.

Liz said... wonder you're single.... ;9

Manju said...

I wasn't talking about the average computer. The best approximation of pi we have so far is about 1.4 trillion digits calculated by (needless to say) some Japanese guy using a supercomputer.

And liz, I'm working on the relationship part. gee whiz. Give me some time. I need to brush up my playa skillz too.