| RIPLEY |
Posted
on 20-Dec-00 08:00 PM
Transcendental Feat
In 1987, Hideaki Tomoyori of Japan astonished the world of both mathematicians and cognitive scientists by reciting 40,000 digits of pi from memory. He accomplished this feat in 17 hours and 21 minutes. Some might have said his record would never be topped. But in February of 1995, Hiroyuki Goto went a bit farther, 42,194 digits. Perhaps more impressive than the increase in digits is that Goto nearly cut the time in half, down to a mere 9 hours and 21 minutes, including breaks. It isn't clear why anyone would particularly want to be able to remember such strings of numbers, but the ability to do so certainly challenges most people's preconceived notions of how their memory works.
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