Is memorizing digits of pi a mathematical feat?

[DaveC426913]

Memory is extremely important, but to waste it on such meaningless information as the digits of Pi is simply, in my ever-so-humble opinion, stupid. He could do anything else with his memory and he did that! What about memorizing formulas, rules of grammar, passages from books you read, or anythign that is relevant to your life! What a waste, what a sheer waste!

Do you really think so?
Your conclusion would be based on a couple of pretty shaky assumptions (mix & match as you wish):

• that one has only a certain amount of memory, such that some of it could be 'wasted'
• that one has only a certain amount of free time, such that doing some pointless activity is demonstrably eating into more meaningful activities
• that the rest of us are using our free time and/or free memory to do more meaningful things - demonstrably more than this person is (eg. what if this guy has no TV, or better yet what if he doesn't frequent the General discussion boards on forums? What if that's the time he uses to memorize pi? Is it still a stupid irrelevant waste of time? Or at least any more of a stupid, irrelevant waste of time than the rest of us are guilty of?)

 

[BobG]

Do you really think so?
Your conclusion would be based on a couple of pretty shaky assumptions (mix & match as you wish):

• that one has only a certain amount of memory, such that some of it could be 'wasted'
• that one has only a certain amount of free time, such that doing some pointless activity is demonstrably eating into more meaningful activities
• that the rest of us are using our free time and/or free memory to do more meaningful things - demonstrably more than this person is (eg. what if this guy has no TV, or better yet what if he doesn't frequent the General discussion boards on forums? What if that's the time he uses to memorize pi? Is it still a stupid irrelevant waste of time? Or at least any more of a stupid, irrelevant waste of time than the rest of us are guilty of?)

The big waste in memorizing 8,784 digits of pi is that he's still 84,106 digits short of reaching where my birthday appears in pi.

 

[BobG]

That's not hard, I had all the molecular weights memorized along with it

Pssh. If you owned a Post 1491 or a Hemmi 257, you wouldn't have to memorize the molecular weights (at least of any of the molecules you're most likely to use).

Hemmi 257