Mathematicians are fascinated by π. After seeing a few neat things about it perhaps you will be fascinated by it too. One quick fact about π is that it is irrational, that is, it cannot be represented fully in finite number of decimal digits. The first few digits are of course 3.14159... No one has yet found patterns within the digits, and daring people hold π reciting contests to test their memorization ability! The world record is 100,000 digits! Ok, I think it is an absolute waste of time to memorize any digits of π beyond perhaps 5 digits. But the trick they use is fairly interesting. They use humorous poems known as piems!
For example, here is one:
How I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics
Notice the length of each words: how = 3, I = 1, need=4, a = 1, drink = 5, alcoholic = 9, making 3.14159. This menomic poems make it easier to remember than remembering raw digits.
Besides the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and All Cars Eat Gas in music that privledged child piano players learned, it is interesting to see menomic in math.
See details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piphilology
Menomic and memory... perhaps it is a serious psychology topic.
Some people apparently had too much time in their hands. Please don't spend time memorizing digits of interesting numbers such as π, e, or φ.
1 comment:
You might want to check this out :) - http://writeapiem.com/
We were fascinated by piems and decided to quickly let people make their own!
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