Pi usually represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Simply put, it is usually said that its value is 3.14. But since the speech is irrational, it can never be printed exactly with numbers. It goes on indefinitely.

Went on time

The speech has fascinated the memory expert Martin Nilsson. He has been training for a long time to try to remember the first 10,000 decimal places. Subsequently, these have been divided into 2,000 different blocks with five digits each.

During the Pi Matrix competition, which was held in Gothenburg this year, the judges call out fifty random blocks at the same time. At each block, the participant must say which five numbers come just before and just after. When all blocks are resolved without any errors, the competition is over and time stops.

Indians have another record

Martin Nilsson completed the task in 14 minutes and 33 seconds. That means he beat former world record holder Kevin Horsley from South Africa who did it in 16 minutes and 38 seconds.

There are also other memory championships for pi, such as memorizing and rubbing as many decimals in the correct order as possible. The world record in that branch is held by Indian Suresh Kumar Sharma who has passed 70 030 decimal places.

Everyday Martin Nilsson works as a psychology teacher at the Cathedral School in Lund.