Deciding to learn Pi was admittedly not a difficult choice. I had been learning some mnemonic techniques and I wanted to put my skills to the test.
Why?
My school has a Pi Day once a year, where we have a competition on who can recite the most digits of Pi. I felt this was an attainable target for myself, with regular practice.
Last year, the winner in our school successfully recited 988 digits, using a Dominic PAO System This system encodes 6 digits into an image, requiring 165 images for the full set. He ended up using 4 memory palaces to store all the digits.
With my target set and my goal in sight, I had to get started right away to stand a chance at the competition.
How?
Simply ~~raw dogging~~ trying to remember the digits is a borderline impossible task when dealing with pi above 200 digits, and would not prove sufficient for my needs in the long term, instead opting to use a combination of mnemonic tricks could easily help me to remember upwards of 1000 digits.
My strategy for learning numbers is the use of the Major System. To sum up the Major System, it maps numbers to sounds. Below is my major system mappings.
0 -> S, Z, Soft C
1 -> T, D
2 -> N,
3 -> M,
4 -> R,
5 -> L,
6 -> Sh, Ch, J, Soft G
7 -> K, Hard C, Hard G, Q
8 -> F, V
9 -> P, BNotice how no vowels are present, these are ignored in the major system, some other consonants are also ignored like h, w and y.
These are the mappings that I use, but really any combination of mappings will do, its mostly upto personal preference.
To begin memorizing a sequence of numbers, we need to split them into chunks of 3. If you are a beginner, chunks of 2 might work better, but will require more images and is therefor less efficient.
Let's take 123 as our set of digits. Use our Major System Map to turn the numbers into sounds / consonants. 1 becomes D, 2 becomes N and 3 becomes M.
Next, find a word that has the sounds in it, with D coming first, followed by N and so on. In our case of 123, some candidate words might be Denim, Dynamo or even Autonomy.
Pick the word that sticks out the most to you, as this will be important later when using your Mind Palace.
Below are my word mappings of the first 9 digits of pi.
3.14 -> MaTTRess
159 -> TuLiP
265 -> NiGeLIn the case of pi, I typically take 3 sets of 3 numbers, and create a image from them. The image should be distinct and easily memorable, so the wilder the better.
For the mappings above, my image is of a mattress lying on top of a massive tulip, with Nigel Farage sleeping on top. ( Quite memorable! )
Remembering Order of digits
Once you have an image, you can work backwards from the word mattress, to pick out the first 3 consonant sounds, M, T and R. Take the sounds and use the Major System Map to get the corresponding digit.
To remember the order of the images, I use the Method of Loci to store them in a sequential "journey".
The concept of the Method of Loci, or alteratively known as the Memory Palace comes from the Greeks, and was invented by the poet Simonides of Ceos. The basic concept of these methods is to store information spatially, which is more effective than short term memory as spatial memory is linked to your long term memory.
The palace I have chosen to store all the digits of pi is my school, as it is very large and has a lot of places to store "loci", or places to store my images. Although I chose my school, really any place you know well will do, even paintings could work.
I can "walk" around the school, and recall the images at the points of loci as my journey continues.
My Progress
As my journey of learning as many digits of Pi continues, I will keep my progress updated here.
- Days Spent learning: 9
- Total Digits Learnt: 413
- Average Digits / Day: 46
Log
- Day One, Hours: 0.3, Digits: 45
- Day Three, Hours: 1.2, Digits: 53
- Day Four, Hours: 0.6, Digits: 25
- Day Five, Hours: 0.4, Digits: 35
- Day Six, Hours: 0.8, Digits: 42
- Day Seven, Hours: 1.6, Digits: 84
- Day Nine, Hours: 1.1, Digits: 120