The Fascinating World of Pi
Do you know how many digits pi has?
Piphilology is the name given to the study of developing mnemonic (aiding memory/remembering) methods and memorizing as many digits as possible to remember the mathematical constant pi. It is not an official science, it is just a name of a profession formed by combining the number of “pi” and “philology”, that is, one of the fields of linguistics.
The most common method for memorizing the digits of the pi number is word games, which we can call “piir”, which consists of combining the words “pi” with the words “poetry”. Such pairs have been prepared in almost all languages.
Some people overdo it. For example, a book called Not A Wake is a real literary work, it consists of 10 chapters and the words that make up each chapter are written per the digits of the number pi! The entire book deals with the 10,000 digits of pi in the same order. But they are also poems that tell meaningful stories! Throughout the book, the letters corresponding to each digit of the number pi continue in the same sequence as the number pi. For example, the first line of the first chapter reads:
Now I fall, a tired suburbian in liquid under the trees
Drifting alongside forests simmering red in the twilight over Europe.
So scream with the old mischief, ask me another conundrum
About bitterness of possible fortunes near a landscape Italian.
Note that the number of letters in words in the English version corresponds to the number of pi: 3.14159265358979323846 The title of the book also corresponds to 3.14.
The 3 pages of the book (pages 2, 12, and 79) can be read by clicking here. You can also buy the printed version for $10, and the Kindle version for $3.14, of course, on Amazon by clicking here.
The record for memorizing the number Pi belongs to Lu Chao, a Chinese student. Chao can recite the first 67,890 digits of pi in 24 hours and 4 minutes without making a single mistake!
