The Pi VersesMarch 2009
"Waste of Memory"? I find it bizarre that when you mention something like memorizing pi to many decimal places, people will often say something like "what a waste of memory", as if our brains were an old 10 GB hard drive that we risk filling up with extra information. As if! I've seen people damage their brains in many ways, but memorizing too much isn't among them. We don't say of an athlete "just think what they could have accomplished if they had done something useful with all that muscle and energy". We celebrate achievement, and that should include academic achievement. I believe that memorizing things builds rather than fills your memory. It is something most of us should aspire to do more. The "Pi Verses" So why do I call this article "The Pi Verses"? Have you ever seen those signs "JN 3:16". People put it as obscure billboard, hold it up a sporting events, and so on. Have you ever thought "that looks almost like the first three decimal places of pi"? For those who don't know, this is a well known Bible verse: John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life". The problem with citing it on its own is the first word. I've heard "when you see a therefore, ask what it's there for". In other words, you can't properly understand a quote which begins with a logical bridging word, since it obviously depends on what was written before. Mulling this over, it occured to me that what is lacking is probably the "John Pi Verses", that is the digits of pi to 5 decimal places taken as John 3:14,15.
Maybe the first half of that has you just plain confused. That's ok. If something makes you think, makes you do some research to understand it better, that's ok. I leave it as a mental exercise for the reader to paste verse 16 to the end, hence producing John 3:14-16. Now if 3:14,15 provides the first 5 digits of pi, 3:14-16 provide a rounding off of pi to 5 digits - helping you remember that the 6th digit of pi is greater than 5! Maybe some readers are ready to give up here. My point with the previous paragraph is to muse a bit. It may sound rambling, but it actually does help remember both. It helps you memorizing pi, it helps you remember the verses and where they divide. I think that one of the biggest problems we have with trying to learn things is passivity. Anything that gets you involved and thinking about what you are trying to learn will help. Pi Verses could be found in lots of numbered literature, not just Holy books. Perhaps you are wanting to memorize lines of a poem: verse 3, lines 1-4 are the "pi verses". This can provide an anchoring point to remember the surrounding parts as well. For the sake of Muslims reading this:
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