Saturday, March 17, 2007

Would Lovecraft Have Been a Member of the Pi club?

In the Dreams In the Witch House mathematics reigns magical. Now there is a church of The Acolytes of Pi.

The full story will be atttached to comments, but these folks recite Pi to the 100,000th decimal place with suave confidence. 16 hours straight of recitation and they are in geometric ratio nirvana.

Lovecraftian fiction meets reality.
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Chris Perridas said...

3.14’s company: Fans of a famous number have their day
By ERIN MCCLAM
The Associated Press
This is a story about love. About inscrutable complexity and remarkable simplicity, about the promise of forever. It is about obsession and devotion, about grand gestures and 4,000-word love letters.
It is about a curious group of people with an almost religious zeal for a mind-numbing string of numbers. Actually, one number, made up of a chain that is known — so far — to be more than one trillion digits long.
They are the acolytes of the church of pi.
And once a year, many of them gather to talk about pi, rhapsodize about it, eat pi-themed foods (actual pie, sure, but so much more), have pi recitation contests and, just maybe, feel a little less sheepish about their unusual passion.
That day falls on Wednesday this year: March 14. Or 3.14. Obviously.
The question is why, of course. And if you ask the fans of pi why, a startling number of them will come back with the same question: “Why climb Mount Everest?” Because it’s there.
But then they start talking about some very simple ideas. Like the beauty of a number that seems to go on forever and yet has no discernible pattern to it. Or about the valor of the memorization gymnastics, challenging oneself always to know more.
This is how Akira Haraguchi, a 60-year-old mental health counselor in Japan, puts it: “What I am aiming at is not just memorizing figures. I am thrilled by seeking a story in pi.”
He said this one day last fall after accurately reciting pi to 100,000 decimal places. It took him 16 hours. He does not hold the Guinness world record, only because he has not submitted the required documentation to Guinness. But he has his story.
(Incidentally, the world record belongs to Chao Lu, a Chinese chemistry student, who rattled off 67,890 digits over 24 hours in 2005. It took 26 video tapes to submit to Guinness.)
A brief math refresher: Pi a simple concept, the relationship between a circle’s circumference and diameter: Multiply the diameter by pi — 3.14159, to use a crude approximation that would make many of the people in this story blanch — and you get the circumference.
Supercomputers have computed pi to more than a trillion decimal places, looking always for a pattern to unlock its mystery. For centuries, the number has fascinated mathematicians.
And then there are people like Marc Umile. Twelve years ago, while working as an usher at a Philadelphia opera house, he picked up a book on curiosities of math and read about pi’s seemingly infinite, random string.
He wondered about applying the way we absorb music to the mystical number. An obsession was born. In 2004, Umile read the digits of pi into a tape recorder. He did it a thousand at a time and gave it a rhythm — some numbers high-toned, some low.
He listened to the tape constantly. This went on for two years. A two-year trance.
“To and from work, in my quiet time, on my lunch break — and when I didn’t have the tape, I would recite in the shower,” he said. “Probably 40 percent of the time, there was an earphone in my ear. I said, ‘Oh, my God! What have I created?’”
What he created was what is believed to be U.S. record for pi memorization — 12,887 digits. He typed them into a spreadsheet at a Philadelphia law office — three-and-a-half hours, 1,000 numbers at a time, with two smoke breaks.
Umile, who is 40 and now works as a Medicare biller, believes the fascination with pi has something to do with our desire to learn the ultimate truth of something. Each decimal place, in theory, takes you 10 times closer to the answer.
He said he made a mistake in his training: He told too many people what he was up to. His wife, his family — they were rooting for him. Most of the rest dismissed him as a weirdo.
“I have a delicate confidence level in a way,” he said. “Maybe I don’t believe in myself too much. If you do something of this magnitude, keep it a secret. Don’t tell anybody what you’re doing.”
Others are less shy about their fixation.
A software engineer in Virginia named Mike Keith wrote a poem to pi, a “piem.” A love letter, in a way. To say that it is a something to behold is an understatement: It is nearly 4,000 words long — and the length in letters of each word corresponds to pi’s digits.
In other words, if you can remember the poem — which riffs on T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Act V of “Hamlet” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” among other texts — you too can recite pi.
“One: A Poem: A Raven,” it begins (3-1-4-1-5). “Midnights so dreary, tired and weary, silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore. During my rather long nap — the weirdest tap! An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber’s antedoor.”
And so on.
Keith said he thinks of himself only as “an average pi nut.” He figures he knows maybe 100 pi digits off the top of his head. “My daughter knows about 50,” he adds. “She’s 15.”
There are logical gathering places for people like this, and one of them is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where, on March 14, students have been known to wish each other — out loud — a happy Pi Day.
The school plays a role in encouraging this: In the past, it has tried to mail its acceptance letters March 14. (It didn’t work out this year. And last year, when an MIT official wrote on an admissions blog that it probably wouldn’t work out then either, he was greeted with disappointment. “Pi Day seems so romantic,” one prospective student wrote.)
There’s a popular chant, an MIT rallying cry, that includes “3.14159.” (It rhymes with “Cosine, secant, tangent, sine!” And Bryan Owens, an MIT senior, says the ability to recite pi is a sort of bragging right, a coin of the realm.
“It’s like how much money you have,” he said. “But you never win. You always find somebody who knows it to more digits than you do. I think the basic idea is we like to celebrate things, kind of celebrate who we are.”
And that is why, like the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day or Italians on Columbus Day, this Wednesday, 3/14, in many cases at 1:59 p.m., pi enthusiasts will have their moment in the sun.
At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, there will be pies to eat, people wearing pi jewelry, more beads — color-coded by digit — added to the pi string. And the celebrants will gather at a sort of pi shrine, a brass plaque engraved with pi’s first 100 digits.
It might be a stretch to say that pi has achieved a kind of cultural cachet, but it is true that, as an obsession, it’s not just for math geeks anymore. Givenchy makes a Pi perfume. Kate Bush sings out its digits in a song. And — of course — YouTube stocks videos of people reading pi into the camera.
Umile, the pi-chanting Medicare biller who struggled with self-confidence, already is booked to appear on a local TV show Wednesday. The other night, he rattled off 10,000 pi digits, just to keep the gears oiled.
Funny thing, though: For the life of him, he can’t remember the phone number he calls every month to make his mortgage payment. And the other day, he got his own bank account number wrong.
“It starts with 6-1-4,” he said. “And I wrote 3-1-4.”
One
A Poem


A Raven

Midnights so dreary, tired and weary,
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
"This", I whispered quietly, "I ignore".
Perfectly, the intellect remembers: the ghostly fires, a glittering ember.
Inflamed by lightning's outbursts, windows cast penumbras upon this floor.
Sorrowful, as one mistreated, unhappy thoughts I heeded:
That inimitable lesson in elegance - Lenore -
Is delighting, exciting...nevermore.
Ominously, curtains parted (my serenity outsmarted),
And fear overcame my being - the fear of "forevermore".
Fearful foreboding abided, selfish sentiment confided,
As I said, "Methinks mysterious traveler knocks afore.
A man is visiting, of age threescore."
Taking little time, briskly addressing something: "Sir," (robustly)
"Tell what source originates clamorous noise afore?
Disturbing sleep unkindly, is it you a-tapping, so slyly?
Why, devil incarnate!--" Here completely unveiled I my antedoor--
Just darkness, I ascertained - nothing more.
While surrounded by darkness then, I persevered to clearly comprehend.
I perceived the weirdest dream...of everlasting "nevermores".
Quite, quite, quick nocturnal doubts fled - such relief! - as my intellect said,
(Desiring, imagining still) that perchance the apparition was uttering a whispered "Lenore".
This only, as evermore.
Silently, I reinforced, remaining anxious, quite scared, afraid,
While intrusive tap did then come thrice - O, so stronger than sounded afore.
"Surely" (said silently) "it was the banging, clanging window lattice."
Glancing out, I quaked, upset by horrors hereinbefore,
Perceiving: a "nevermore".
Completely disturbed, I said, "Utter, please, what prevails ahead.
Repose, relief, cessation, or but more dreary 'nevermores'?"
The bird intruded thence - O, irritation ever since! -
Then sat on Pallas' pallid bust, watching me (I sat not, therefore),
And stated "nevermores".
Bemused by raven's dissonance, my soul exclaimed, "I seek intelligence;
Explain thy purpose, or soon cease intoning forlorn 'nevermores'!"
"Nevermores", winged corvus proclaimed - thusly was a raven named?
Actually maintain a surname, upon Pluvious seashore?
I heard an oppressive "nevermore".
My sentiments extremely pained, to perceive an utterance so plain,
Most interested, mystified, a meaning I hoped for.
"Surely," said the raven's watcher, "separate discourse is wiser.
Therefore, liberation I'll obtain, retreating heretofore -
Eliminating all the 'nevermores' ".
Still, the detestable raven just remained, unmoving, on sculptured bust.
Always saying "never" (by a red chamber's door).
A poor, tender heartache maven - a sorrowful bird - a raven!
O, I wished thoroughly, forthwith, that he'd fly heretofore.
Still sitting, he recited "nevermores".
The raven's dirge induced alarm - "nevermore" quite wearisome.
I meditated: "Might its utterances summarize of a calamity before?"
O, a sadness was manifest - a sorrowful cry of unrest;
"O," I thought sincerely, "it's a melancholy great - furthermore,
Removing doubt, this explains 'nevermores' ".
Seizing just that moment to sit - closely, carefully, advancing beside it,
Sinking down, intrigued, where velvet cushion lay afore.
A creature, midnight-black, watched there - it studied my soul, unawares.
Wherefore, explanations my insight entreated for.
Silently, I pondered the "nevermores".
"Disentangle, nefarious bird! Disengage - I am disturbed!"
Intently its eye burned, raising the cry within my core.
"That delectable Lenore - whose velvet pillow this was, heretofore,
Departed thence, unsettling my consciousness therefore.
She's returning - that maiden - aye, nevermore."
Since, to me, that thought was madness, I renounced continuing sadness.
Continuing on, I soundly, adamantly forswore:
"Wretch," (addressing blackbird only) "fly swiftly - emancipate me!"
"Respite, respite, detestable raven - and discharge me, I implore!"
A ghostly answer of: "nevermore".
" 'Tis a prophet? Wraith? Strange devil? Or the ultimate evil?"
"Answer, tempter-sent creature!", I inquired, like before.
"Forlorn, though firmly undaunted, with 'nevermores' quite indoctrinated,
Is everything depressing, generating great sorrow evermore?
I am subdued!", I then swore.
In answer, the raven turned - relentless distress it spurned.
"Comfort, surcease, quiet, silence!" - pleaded I for.
"Will my (abusive raven!) sorrows persist unabated?
Nevermore Lenore respondeth?", adamantly I encored.
The appeal was ignored.
"O, satanic inferno's denizen -- go!", I said boldly, standing then.
"Take henceforth loathsome "nevermores" - O, to an ugly Plutonian shore!
Let nary one expression, O bird, remain still here, replacing mirth.
Promptly leave and retreat!", I resolutely swore.
Blackbird's riposte: "nevermore".
So he sitteth, observing always, perching ominously on these doorways.
Squatting on the stony bust so untroubled, O therefore.
Suffering stark raven's conversings, so I am condemned, subserving,
To a nightmare cursed, containing miseries galore.
Thus henceforth, I'll rise (from a darkness, a grave) -- nevermore!
-- Allanpoe, E.
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Sat Mar 17, 12:38:00 PM

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