Washington: An Indian American teenager has memorised 10,980 digits of 'pi', the ratio of circumference of a circle to its diameter, rewriting a 27-year-old North American record.
Fifteen-year-old Gaurav Raja, an 11th grader of Salem High School in Virginia, has recited two numbers per second for one hour, 14 minutes and 28 seconds to break the North American record of 10,625 digits.
The world record belongs to Hiroyuki Goto of Japan who has memorised 42,195 digits. This endeavour has earned Raja ninth position in this regard.
"I know what the numbers are, but it is not like I can see them. I just know what they are," Raja said.
The encouragement for his attempt came when his math and science teacher Linda Gooding asked her students to memorise 40 digits of the pi, the non-ending decimal more accurately expressed as a fraction 22/7.
Starting off with memorising about 250, Raja kept practicisng and realised that numbers came to him easily.
"I just don't know how he can do it," his father, Jogesh Raja said. The proud father said that even in kindergarten, the teachers said that their child was gifted in math.
Meanwhile, Raja has his next task cut out for himself — memorising every Nobel Prize winner. "I guess those are a bit more useful," he said.
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