Hickory, N.C. -- Nine-year-old Daniel Crutcher is in the grips of a math problem that never ends. And he doesn't mind.
The Maiden Elementary School student memorized a sizable slice of pi over the last several weeks. Daniel can recite pi, the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter, to 300 decimal places. The number goes on for infinity. Somewhere after No. 180 or so, Daniel said that's one of the things he finds interesting enough about pi to make him keep working at the memorization.
Mostly, though, he said he wants to get his name on the Pi World Ranking List, an online inventory of record holders in the "sport of pi memorization," found at www.pi-world-ranking-list.com. The threshold on the 166-person list is 20 digits, which Daniel easily beats. But he will keep memorizing numbers until he can get a little higher up.
The most on the list is 67,890, which remains the official world record, although organizers note there have been rumors of a Japanese man who recited Pi from memory to 83,431 decimal places.
Daniel doesn't answer when asked if he thinks he could beat the world record. He's too busy drumming his fingers in time to the numbers flying through his head, his lips moving as he silently recites.
"He's got amazing powers of concentration," said his father, Dennis Crutcher.
His son got interested in pi after an afternoon on the YMCA tennis courts, where the high school kids were doing their math homework. He came home and asked about square roots and cube roots, Dennis Crutcher said.
The two started talking about math. Pi came up and they got on the computer to do some research. Dennis Crutcher didn't know what a math monster he was creating. A few days later, Daniel came to him with 65 digits memorized. It's been weeks and he's still going.
"It's definitely something," Dennis Crutcher said, watching as his son ignores his refrain of "time to go" and keeps scribbling the numbers on an oversized pad of paper.
"Whatever it is, I hope we can use it for good someday and not evil."
(Ragan Robinson is a staff writer for the Hickory Daily Record)
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