How to Find a Date Using Pi

NOTE: Apologies for this posting go to Joe B., my favorite geek.

I listen to a lot of talk radio. Via that medium, I stay informed about things going on in our world. My typical daily line up is Laura Ingraham from 8AM to 11AM, Jim Rome from 11AM to 2PM, Sean Hannity from 2PM to 5PM and Chip Howard sports talk on the way home. I call it conservatively diverse.

I am oft amazed by what I hear on the radio. In the last two weeks, I have heard the mayor of New Orleans talk about rebuilding the city to be a “chocolate” city, Hillary Clinton say that the House of Representatives is run like a “southern plantation”, and a guy solve a rubix cube in 11 seconds. Never was I more baffled by a story, though than when I heard about a guy who had memorized the first 4400 digits of pi to win a contest. Are you kidding me? What possibly could be the use in that? Being the inquisitive sort and generally amazed by the “geekiness” of this feat, I investigated further.

Evidently, Chris Lyons competed in the 2006 Mind Sports Australia festival in Melbourne, surely worth the price of admission. Mind Sports Festival has to be code name for “biggest collection of geeks in one room”. I don’t want to unduly criticize any single people group and I readily admit amazement by what the human mind is able to do and am often jealous of those with such abilities. However, memorizing pi to 4400 digits has to be the single biggest waste of time since, well, my Master Cleanse last September. I mean, what are you going to do with that skill? Break it out at parties? “Hey everyone, Chris will now get this party started by reciting the first 4400 digits of pi…come on Chris, drop it like it’s hot, drop it like it’s hot!!” You can’t use it the next time you try meet a girl or ask her out: “Hey, are you tired, because you’ve been running through my mind all night…it is sufficiently evident to me that you are remiss in the accuracy of your calculation of a circle’s area because you are only using 3.14159…recite me your digits so I can memorize them…I’ll call you…we’ll kick it at your crib and calculate more precisely.” Get in line ladies, get in line.

This guy said, and I quote: “With the proper training and techniques, anyone can remember anything.” Huh? If that’s the case, why do we have re-writable CD’s for storing data, or why do companies spend millions backing up their files? He goes on to say further, and again, I quote: “I could have done more digits but there are lots of other things to do with your time.” No joke. For starters, you could memorize something useful, like the yellow pages. At least you’ll never have to look up the number for pizza delivery. The final straw that relegated me to the floor with laughter was that he very seriously announced to the reporter that as memorization goes, pi is the ultimate challenge because it’s an infinite number with no repeating patterns. You the man!!

The only problem with the whole deal is this: despite his profound ability to remember and recall, he FORGOT one crucial element…check the record books. Just a few months earlier, a Japanese man set the world record for memorizing pi to 83,431 digits. What in the world!! Obviously, Chris was too busy partying with pi to take note of this key point. I guess he better start memorizing the numbers 0 to infinity if he wants to take back the record next year. Geeks rule!!