There's a mnemonic to remember the first eight digits of pi:
3.1415926. May I have a large container of coffee
The number of letters in every word indicates the digit.
I saw an amazing feat of memory the other day. Someone
shuffled two full packs of cards and then, as fast as he could, dealt every
one, face up, on to a table. I suppose that it took him as long to
complete this operation as it took him to count from one to a hundred and
four. This process was closely scrutinised by a second man.
Then, after the pack had been turned over so that no card was visible,
one of the audience called out, “thirty-nine.” The second man
instantly said, “six of hearts,” and lo and behold, the thirty ninth card from
the top was the six of hearts.
“Ninety-three,” was the next suggestion and, “ten of spades,” was said
immediately. He had memorised the order of the two packs and
in about a minute.
For everyday purposes, my memory is OK but I can’t imagine ever being
able to learn the order of a pack of cards, even if I had unlimited
time.
I had an English teacher at school who, possibly because he didn’t want
to mark written work, would regularly set, memorising a poem as
homework. (That, I discovered years later, is a very good and useful
tactic.) Some poems I found easy to
remember but many I didn’t.
“He didn’t write that,” I said to Caroline while we were watching the
film ‘Memphis Belle’ on television. “Yeats did.”
A young American pilot of a B-17 bomber was reciting a poem that his
crew assumed he had written.
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere
among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love.
I paused the television.
“That's, ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’ by WB Yeats.
Doughsie Baker made me learn it in the second year,” I told
her. “Do you want to hear the rest?”
“Yes, but on the film, thanks, not from you.”
Oscar and Timo are our nephews and they both seem
to have excellent memories and they are also competitive. Oscar
bought a book of the elements of the periodic table to read on a car journey to
our house in Wavendon. Every element had a page to itself, listing things like
its symbol, atomic number and melting point.
They had been reading it together on the hour-long
journey and as soon as he saw me, Timo, who is nine, announced, "I know
the first 49 elements in the periodic table."
“Test me,” he demanded, handing me the book.
“Zinc.”
“Symbol is z n, atomic number 30, Melting point 420
centigrade and it was discovered by Andreas Maggraf in 1746.”
I was impressed. “Andreas Maggraf was
German,” Timo added, obligingly.
A few minutes later I heard Timo shouting out to
his mum. It was a grief-stricken cry that conveyed a feeling of
distress that I, and possibly no one else, has ever heard before.
“Mum! Oscar’s locked himself in the
toilet with the book to learn more elements.”
Eventually, Oscar emerged and told Timo that he
knew the first hundred. Timo was allowed sole possession of the book
for a time and so Oscar decided to learn the digits of pi
instead. He printed off the first 1000 and disappeared
upstairs.
Sometime later, he reappeared and told us that he
knew the first hundred. By the next day, he knew the first
328.
Oscar has some way to go, however. The
world champion has recited the first 100,000 digits of pi and it took him nearly
17 hours to do it.
Even
at my age, I must be able to do better than eight digits and so I have
used 'May I have a large container of
coffee' as the start of a
blank-verse "poem".
Ignore the
punctuation, remember that the word ‘zero’ represents 0 and not 4 as I couldn’t think of any words that have no letters. Memorise this “poem” and
you will know the first 50 digits of pi.
I don’t see the point of that - but you might.
May I have a large
container of coffee?
After two hours,
Caroline concluded working furiously
And so, was
exultant.
Four flasks of
whisky were all she received
But in gulping,
Caroline’s found zero to eulogise.
Drinking with a
rapturous imbiber,
A modest
reticence, but essential.
Sometimes the
drinker - never I.
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751
Caroline has just told me that it
is easier to learn the first 50 digits of pi than to remember that poem.
I think she’s just grumpy. I didn’t set out to make it appear that I
might disapprove of her drinking. It’s her fault for having an
eight-letter name.
Honestly, it
just developed that way.
