An Indian man with an incredible memory recently set a new world record by reciting a whopping 14,000 digits of Euler’s number in just 49 minutes.
Deepu V has always had an uncanny memory when it came to numbers. He once set a national record by reciting 2,000 digits of the irrational number pi faster than anyone else, and claims to have committed 500 telephone numbers to memory. But when he heard about a world record for memorizing the most decimal places of Euler’s number, he saw an opportunity to have his name featured in the renowned Guinness Book of Records. He spent four months preparing for this epic attempt and took under an hour to blow the previous record of 10,122 digits right out of the water.
Photo: Guinness Records
Like pi, Euler’s number is an irrational number. It begins with 2.71828 and continues infinitely in a series of decimals that never repeats. To ensure that challengers don’t cheat during their attempts at breaking this unique Guinness Record, their ears are checked and they are blindfolded before they begin reciting digits. Getting just one decimal wrong or taking more than 15 seconds to recite the next decimal results in disqualification. But Deepu was so confident in his “tabular” method of memorization that he was unfazed by the strict rules of the record attempt.
“In a table, there are 10 columns and 20 rows. I added five digits in each column, thus in a column of one full row, there are 50 numbers. And with 20 rows on a page, there will be a total of 1,000 digits. Likewise, in 14 pages I was able to include 14,000 digits,” the 33-year-old man told Guinness Records.
Photo: the beginning of Euler’s Number
Deepu V spent four months preparing for his epic challenge. He memorized 250 digits per day from Monday to Thursday, using the remaining three days of the week consolidating all this new information in his memory. To ensure he was ready, he sometimes recorded himself reciting Euler’s number decimals to catch any mistakes he made.
All the hard work paid off, as in the end, Deepu V made short work of the previous Guinness Record of 10,122 recited Euler’s number decimals, uttering no less than 14,000 decimals in 49 minutes.
