A) 25%
B) 50%
C) 60%
D) 25%

"The story began many years ago in 1974 when I wanted to find a formula for the n'th digit of Pi... since the computation of Pi looks more complicated than the number e... I studied a way to compute that number instead.

...During my stay at Bordeaux University in 1992-1993 I perfected that program I had that could interface Pari-Gp and Maple. That little Unix script had an enormous advantage of flexibility because I could set up a series of real numbers to test among 1 unknown. At that time I was beginning to find new results, the programs were able to find identities.

That program was the one that found the formula for Pi in hexadecimal (or binary)...

This is where I made the biggest mistake in my life : To accept the collaboration of Peter Borwein and David H. Bailey as co-founders of that algorithm and formula when they have found nothing at all. David Bailey was not even close to me when I found the formula. He was added to the group 2 months after the discovery.

I was naively thinking that I could negotiate a job as professor at Simon Fraser University, which failed. I am very poor at negotiations. I remember that day when the Globe & Mail newspaper article went out in October 1995. I was at Jon Borwein's house and he had a copy of the newspaper in hand. This is where I asked him to become a professor at SFU. He simply replied right away < don't even think about it >. I thought, this is the best chance I will ever have to become a professor there, since it failed, I decided that I had to leave that place.

I was very frustrated at that time, in late 1995 after the discovery. I realized that many small details where terribly wrong. They were getting a lot of credit for the discovery and I had the impression of not getting anything in return. My strategy failed... Later that year, I was invited to a ceremony in Vancouver for the CUFA (faculty of the year Award). This is a prize with plaque and mention that those 2 brothers received for the discovery of the formula. They simply mentioned my name at the ceremony and I received nothing at all...

Then in 1996, I realized that if I get up at night to hate them it is a very bad sign, it means that I have to leave that place (Simon Fraser university). I was convinced I had no future at all with those 2 guys around. I was making serious plans to leave.

...About David H. Bailey. He came after the discovery of the formula and my small basic program , I had also a Fortran version. This is where Peter Borwein suggested to add him as a collaborator to the discovery since he contributed to it (as he said), this is my second big mistake. Of course he accepted to co-write the article, who wouldn't ?! David H. Bailey (and Ferguson) are the authors of the PSLQ program. That program is the version of the Pari-Gp program. I used it a little it is true, but what made the discovery was Pari-Gp and Maple interface program I had. So actually, that person has nothing to do with the discovery of that algorithm and very little to do with the finding of the formula. The mistake was mine. Saying that Bailey found the formula is like saying that the formula was found by the Maple and Basic program.

I tried very hard to correct the situation avoiding the subject of the actual discovery of the algorithm and the formula, I made an article in 1996 for the base 10. I thought naively again that this would re-establish the situation, it did not. I almost accepted to do a film at one point in 1999 when a certain guy from England that wanted to make a movie on Pi and the discovery of the formula. he asked me if I would accept to talk about my with the Borweins. I did not wanted to go in that direction, I should had. There was that book of Jean-Paul Delahaye (le fascinant nombre pi) that mentioned the Plouffe algorithm and formula because I told him part of the story. In some way I was afraid of revealing that enormous story.

Why was I so naive? I had a previous collaboration with Neil Sloane and the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences and the web site, this was really a big success and Neil is the person I respect the most in mathematics so this is why I thought (wrongly ) that my collaboration with the Borweins had to go well, a big mistake.

Why do I write this? To tell the truth and also the arrogance of those people makes me sick.

Will I gain something from this? I don't care, I have nothing to loose.

Simon Plouffe Montréal, le 22 juin 2003."

               

1. In 1993 she split $11 million.
2. In 2006 she won $2 million.
3. In 2008 she won $3 million.
4. Last month, she won $10 million.

"After examining the rate of chatter from almost 3 million movie tweets, the researchers constructed a linear regression model for predicting box-office revenues of movies in advance of their release. These results outperformed the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a market in which people can buy and sell virtual shares in actors, directors and individual movies and produces unusually accurate predictions of film popularity."

"UBC researchers have proffered a new mathematical model that seeks to unravel a key evolutionary riddle--namely what factors underlie the generation of biological diversity both within and between species."

• first take out a quarter (the highest denomination coin below $0.40),
• then take out a dime (the next highest denomination below $0.15),
• then finally, take out 5 pennies (since there is no nickels).

"Proof -- easy numeric comparison. There are 52! possible orderings of a deck, and I'm assuming all are equally likely after your shuffling. Let's wildly overestimate and assume that every second since the universe was created, a million decks of cards were shuffled and someone looked through them. Thus fewer than 10^24 orderings have ever been seen.

But at an incredibly crude estimate, 52! is at least 10^42 * 10!; let's underestimate that again wildly by 10^42. That means that chances of your ordering ever having come up previously are at most 1 in 10^18.

(Note, by the birthday paradox, the chances that there have been two identical orderings observed by two people in history are quite a bit higher -- perhaps even feasibly likely; I haven't calculated it. But we're looking here at the probability that a given ordering matches one of the ones previously seen.)"

• 1540 - 1610: 35 digits determined
• done by German mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen
• used a geometric method (just like Archimedes did)
• proud of his calculation that took a great part of his life
• he had the digits engraved on his tombstone
• 1949: 2, 037 digits computed (John von Neumann et al.)
• 1973: Over one million digits computed
• 1989: One billion digits computed (Chudnovsky brothers)
• 2010: 2.7 trillion digits computed (F. Bellard)
• In the near future: Almost all of them computed?

• David Fiore wrote down 10,625 decimal places of pi
• He was 18 years old at the time
• He is known as the first person to ever break 10,000 decimal places
• It took him three hours and five minutes

• Creighton Carvello recited 20,013 decimal places of pi
• 2003: he recalled 3,500 facts about every FA Cup Final since 1872 (names of referees, goal scorers, teams, crowd attendances, scores, venues...)
• Memorized the exact sequence of 10,000 words from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea
• Recited 17 random digits after seeing them for 2 seconds

• Rajan Mahadevan recited 31,811 digits of pi
• He discovered his exceptional ability to memorize numbers at the age of 4 during a party hosted by his family
• During the party, Rajan wandered to a parking lot and committed the license plate numbers of every guest's car for recitation later
• A quote: "I am not good at remembering words - words confuse my system of memorizing. Numbers, I have no problems at all. I put away huge numbers in something similar to a computer file and I can recall them even after decades."

• Hideaki Tomoyori recited 40,000 decimal places of pi
• Took him 17 hours 21 minutes (including breaks totaling 4 hours 15 minutes) to recite
• Took him 10 years to memorize 40,000 decimal places

• Chao Lu recited 67,890 decimal places of pi
• Took him 24 hours 4 minutes to recite (with no breaks)
• Took him 1 year to memorize 100,000 digits (he made a mistake at the 67,891th digit when going for the record)
• He is the current (official) record holder
• In 2006, Akira Haraguchi, a retired Japanese engineer, claimed to have recited 100,000 decimal places. This, however, has yet to be verified by Guinness World Records.

• A. Slyusarchuk claims to have 30 million digits memorized
• The digits are printed in 20 volumes of text
• He is a neurosurgeon, medical doctor and professor
• He was able to recite randomly selected sequences from within the first 30 million places of pi
• Reciting 30 million digits of pi at one digit a second would take 347 days (nonstop)
• No officially documented attempt to debunk his claims has been successful as of yet

• Grace Hare recited 31 digits of pi
• It took her 18 seconds
• She is 3 years old and the youngest record holder

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

• The short story Cadaeic Cadenza encodes 3835 digits
• It was written in 1996 by Mike Keith
• Words of length 10 encode the digit 0
• Words of length 11 (or 12) encode the two consecutive digits 1,1 (or 1,2)
• 2010: In his book Not A Wake, Keith extends to 10,000 digits of pi

• Split pi into small groups of digits (like 4 digits or 5, 6, 7, whatever you are comfortable with)
• Focus on memorizing the first small group
• Some people find singing it helps
• When comfortable with the first group, move on to the next
• Cons: If you lose your spot, you may have to start over.

• Major System: Convert numbers into sounds.
• Sounds without numbers are used as 'fillers'
• Form words from the sounds
• In practice, use 100 'peg words': rat is 41; bar is 94

1. Start by converting each digit of pi to its corresponding phonetic sound
2. Group sounds together to create a list of words
3. Words created should be actions or objects
4. Alternatively, use your 'fixed' peg words for the number
5. Use the Link System: Link words together into a long chain by using a sequence of events, a story, or a journey. The CRAZIER the story the BETTER!!

• Pros: Can recite starting at any decimal spot (if you lose your spot, you don't have to start over)
• First 10 decimal places (1415926535) associated with 0
• Use the Major System to encode as: turtle-pinochle-mall and link it to 0 (saw)
• Example: Picture yourself using a saw to cut open a turtle who is playing pinochle at the mall
• Next 10 digits (8979323846) would be linked to 1 in the same manner
• Next 10 digits linked to 2
• Repeat.

"There are four ranks of cards, instead of the usual 13. Instead of 2 through Ace, cards are ranked according to the topological classification of their symbol ... 2,3,5,7,J,K all have the same property that they can be deformed into a dot or line. These are the lowest ranked cards. In fact, by themselves they're worth dick--hence the name for these cards.

4,6,9,A are topologically the same as a 'o', and hence are called holes, ohs, or--if you can get away with it--hoes. These are the second ranked cards in ascending order.

10 is in a class by itself because it's a combination of a dick and a hoe, so it's called a Split, and is third ranked.

8,Q are topologically the same because of the way the Q is made on cards, with the slash going all the way across and creating two holes. This is the highest rank--the double hoe, or just double."

"Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-centre, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-centre cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighbouring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza - and if not, who will get more?

Of course you could estimate the area of each slice, tot them all up and work out each person's total from that. But these guys are mathematicians, and so that wouldn't quite do. They wanted to be able to distil the problem down to a few general, provable rules that avoid exact calculations, and that work every time for any circular pizza."

• you compete against some other people
• each of you guess one number from [0, 100]
• compute 2/3rd's of the average of the guessed numbers
• the winner is whoever is closest

"In tests in Canada, women who were told that men and women do math equally well did much better than those who were told there is a genetic difference in math ability.

And women who heard there were differences caused by environment -- such as math teachers giving more attention to boys -- outperformed those who were simply reminded they were females.

The women who did better in the tests got nearly twice as many right answers as those in the other groups, explained Steven J. Heine, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver."