Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Are These Folks Humans or Cyborgs!?

Some people's brains are definitely wired very differently from mine....

When I first read of autistic savant Daniel Tammet's recitation of pi to over 22,500 decimals back in 2004, it seemed like a stunt beyond human comprehension, likely not to be surpassed in my lifetime… BOY, WAS I WRONG!!
It was a couple years later that I learned that Tammet's effort merely set a British and European record for pi recitation, but wasn't even close to the world record. As far back as 1981, an Indian had already recited pi to almost 32,000 digits, and a couple of Japanese blokes later greatly surpassed that endeavor. Then in 2005, a Chinese fellow, Chao Lu, would more than TRIPLE Tammet's puny ;-) performance, by reciting from memory, a phenomenal 67,890 digits of pi, and is still listed as the official record-holder by some accounts. Here's one listing of the world's top pi record-holders:

http://pi-world-ranking-list.com/lists/memo/

I'm not sure how these "official" designations are established though, because the current proclaimed record-holder is a former Japanese engineer, named Akira Haraguchi, who recited pi to 100,000 digits in 2006 (breaking his own prior record of almost 84,000):

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,217765,00.html

Simply UNNNreal! (...Having said that though, pi has now been computed to 10 trillion digits, so HEY Akira, ya gotta ways to go yet!)

...Now, if only I could remember where I left my car keys last night.

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