How Do We End This?

Here's a Start... The answer is 3.141592653589793238462643

Mar 13, 2023

I wish I could remember pi,
"Eureka!" cried the great inventor,
Christmas pudding, Christmas pie,
Is the problem's very center.

*No animals were hurt during these pie throwing events, though not everyone agrees.

As a child I came aross a book on memory, which claimed the following poem is a mnemonic for memorizing the first 20 digits of pi:

Pie, I wish I could remember determine pi,
"Eureka!" cried the great inventor,
Christmas pudding, Christmas pie,
Is the problem's very center.

The idea is to take the number of letters in each word. But this is incorrect: the fifth words should be 9 letters long, not 8. I suggest replacing “remember” with “determine” , “recollect” or “calculate”.

Mike Keith has taken this idea to extremes.

Another, more poetic version is:

Sir, I have a rhyme excelling,

In mystic power and magic spelling,

Celestial spirits elucidate,

For my own problems can't relate.

Extensions to 30 or 31 decimals of the same proceed as follows:

Sir, I send a rhyme excelling,

In sacred truth and rigid spelling,

Numerical sprites elucidate,

For me the lexicon's full weight,

If nature gain, who can complain,

Tho' Dr Johnson fulminate?

Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling

In mystic force and magic spelling

Celestial sprites elucidate

All my own striving can't relate

Or locate they who can cogitate

And so finally terminate. Finis.^[10]^[11]

There are minor variations on the above rhyme, which still allow pi to be worked out correctly. However, one variation replaces the word "lexicon's" with "lesson's" and in doing so, incorrectly indicates that the 18th digit is seven.

The logologist Dmitri Borgmann gives the following 30-word poem in his book, Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities:^[12]

Now, a moon, a lover refulgent in flight,

Sails the black silence's loneliest ellipse.

Computers use pi, the constant, when polite,

Or gentle data for sad tracking aid at eclipse.

In the fantasy book, Somewhen by David Saul, a 35-word piem both provides a description of the constant pi and the digits. The text is also laid out as a circle to provide another clue to the readers as to the purpose of the poem. In this example, the word "nothing" is used to represent the digit zero.

It's a fact

A ratio immutable

Of circle round and width,

Produces geometry's deepest conundrum.

For as the numerals stay random,

No repeat lets out its presence,

Yet it forever stretches forth.

Nothing to eternity.

The following sonnet is a mnemonic for pi to 75 decimal places in iambic pentameter:

Now I defy a tenet gallantly

Of circle canon law: these integers

Importing circles' quotients are, we see,

Unwieldy long series of cockle burs

Put all together, get no clarity;

Mnemonics shan't describeth so reformed

Creating, with a grammercy plainly,

A sonnet liberated yet conformed.

Strangely, the queer'st rules I manipulate

Being followéd, do facilitate

Whimsical musings from geometric bard.

This poesy, unabashed as it's distressed,

Evolvéd coherent - a simple test,

Discov'ring poetry no numerals jarred.

Note that in this example, 10-letter words are used to represent the digit zero.

Other poems use sound as a mnemonic technique, as in the following poem^[13] which rhymes with the first 140 decimal places of pi using a blend of assonance, slant rhyme, and perfect rhyme:

dreams number us like pi. runes shift. nights rewind

daytime pleasure-piles. dream-looms create our id.

moods shift. words deviate. needs brew. pleasures rise.

time slows. too late? wait! foreign minds live in

us! quick-minds, free-minds, minds-we-never-mind,

unknown, gyrate! neuro-rhymes measure our

minds, for our minds rhyme. crude ego-emanations

distort nodes. id, (whose basic neuro-spacetime rhymes),

plays its tune. space drones before fate unites

dreams’ lore to unsung measures. whole dimensions

gyrate. new number-games donate quick minds &

weave through fate’s loom. fears, hopes, digits, or devils