March 14 is always a special day for math geeks. The numeric date — the third month, 14th day, matches pi to two decimal places: 3.14.  (The Greek letter pi being the symbol for the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle).

This year’s pi day is very special. If you add the last two digits of this year, you get pi to four decimal places. And if you plan something for 9:26 and 53 seconds, you have pi to nine decimal places.

The fascination with pi is it never repeats.  It’s been run to thousands of decimal places and no one can find a pattern. In fact, memorizing pi is now considered a sport.  Assording to the website http://www.pi-world-ranking-list.com/ , the world record-holder is Chao Lu of China at 67,890 digits!

If you’re looking for a new sport, here’s a couple of  websites to get you started:  http://www.wikihow.com/Memorize-Pi  and http://math-fail.com/2010/03/memorizing-pi-world-records-and-techniques.html

Or you can just start with this — 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944  (pi to 60 decimal places)