Thanks for the tip, climbformemory. The North American record of 15,314, which had stood for 13 years, was broken by math tutor Paul Hearding, who recited 16,106. It’s good for 15th on the World Pi Recital list.
2 Likes
I am not trying to devalue this person, but 16.106 digits doesn’t seem many digits for an elite brain athlete. Am I right? Dissert.
It’s tougher than it seems. I think the hardest part is getting all those memory palaces made along with the constant review. If it were terribly easy the NA record would not have stood for 13 years. That being said, it’s eminently doable with the right person, the right techniques, and the right focus.
2 Likes
This list doesn’t look complete, but it only has about 15 people who have memorized more than 16,000 digits.
1 Like
Apart from the months/years work of preparation, it’s also important to take into consideration how the recall is done for PI recitals. You basically have to recite PI decimals verbally for hours after hours (10+ hours if the quantity is large enough), and you’re not allowed to say something wrong even once. That’s extremely taxing and hard. I’d even find that hard even if I only had to read that out loud from a piece of paper (not during the first hour, but after 5-6 hours? Sure!).
To give an example, former World Memory Champion Jonas von Essen attempted to recite 100’000 decimal digits of PI this year (after almost 2 years of preparation, I think). He had an error fairly early, which ended up in him “only” getting 24’063 digits.
The bottom line: 16’000 digits is impressive. It’s certainly doable for many of the top memory athletes, but it’s far from an easy task even for them.
3 Likes
Are you allowed to take a nap?
1 Like
I’d be more concerned about being able to use the bathroom!
1 Like
Is @jonassonn still having this on his mind as a goal or has he moved on to something else?
He has the chance to become the first person to tick off a 'God of Memory’ standard.
1 Like
1 Like
Dynamic loci creation is one way. Does anyone use simple chain? I did for 1000 digits. But was discouraged by much more impressive numbers.
Well, the Pi Matrix requires you to know 10,000 digits of pi, but hey… 16k is still very impressive to the average Joe, and I’d like to see half the Monday morning quarterbacks on this forum try for half of it… and 8k is less than the Matrix Challenge.
Yay, did my shopping list with the story method… got me some bananas and butter at the grocery store… seriously? And, 100 digits of pi is not just sitting down 10 more nights to get to 1,000…
…I mean, have an opinion… put up a rainbow flag… but if YOU never made it past 10k… you might wanna reconsider how valuable your input is on this topic… unless we’re talking fan-fiction of course and your memory palaces have different colors and temperatures and your PAO includes “adjectives” (how innovative)… good luck with that!
1 Like
Thanks, that was good. I do not know how i was ever in the Memory Challenges section.
How does one highlight a section of the text on a Wikipedia page? 
Highlight some text on any webpage and right-click. There should be an option that says something like “copy link to selected text”. If you don’t see that option when you right-click, download this browser extension. It works in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge.
1 Like