I had an email today from Ulrich Voigt, inviting me to join him and Rüdiger Gamm in a pi-memory contest. He's got a program that asks you for, say, the 93rd digit and you have to fill it in, or else the next two or ten or whatever digits after that point. He says "I feel that Rüdiger Gamm / Ben Pridmore / Ulrich Voigt might suceed in getting some sponsor to make the matter financially interesting", which I'm a bit sceptical about, to be honest, but I suppose anything's possible.
The question that mainly concerns me is whether I could be any good at this kind of thing. For the first hundred digits it would be a piece of cake - just give me ten minutes or so to memorise a hundred three-digit numbers (01-1, 02-4, 03-1 and so on) and I can blitz that no problem. But for a task like 5000 places, 10-digit answers, I would have to not only re-memorise pi (like I've been meaning to do for quite some time), but memorise it in a way more conducive to naming the nth digit on demand. Because the way I did it before is rather inconvenient for that purpose.
So I think I might do it, just for the challenge. But will anyone want to watch? Ulrich is a very big fan of this contest, but what it boils down to is someone tapping numbers into a computer. It's a bit incomprehensible for spectators, even after the whole premise has been explained to them. Still, you never know what will catch on, and I'll try anything once.
Let’s say you’re not using any of your memory sorcery ways, what’s the average maximum number of numbers you can handle/remember?
ReplyDeleteI never try to remember numbers without using sorcery nowadays. But I did memorise a 160-digit number without magic, back in 2000.
ReplyDelete