-> "I could go to Vegas. Learn to play Black Jack. Memorize four hundred fifty two consecutive digits of pi, a few hundred measly cards are easy."
-->-- '''Fred''', ''{{Angel}}''

A quick way to show that a character is a genius is to have him recite [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi pi]] to an absurd number of places. Pi, with its endless parade of decimal digits, has both mystique and geek cred - it has its own [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day day]], it's splashed across mugs and T-shirts, calculating 1-10 millions of digits of π is a very common way of testing your CPU's power, and it's honored by [[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138704/ movies]] and [[http://keithschofield.com/pi/std.html songs]]. Most of us never memorize it past a few places, so anyone who can fire off a hundred surely must be a genius, right?

For the record, odds are that your computer "knows" pi to the nearest multiple of 2^-62, about 2.168 * 10^-19, so about eighteen reliable digits. Ditto for e. You can compute it much more precisely, but you'll need to make your own storage.

The truth is, only a handful of digits are needed for most applications- only 11 decimal places are needed to calculate the circumference of the Earth to a millimeter, while only 39 are needed to find the circumference of a circle the size of the visible universe to a precision of a hydrogen atom. There's not much point in memorizing a hundred places other than to [[GoodWithNumbers show off]].
For reference, here's a [[http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/031208/how-many-digits-of-pi-do-you-know.gif handy guide]].

Perhaps the reason ReedRichardsIsUseless is because he spends his time memorizing numbers he'll never use. It's also a common attribute of the AbsentMindedProfessor, as the contrast is a wonderful thing to show or rant about.

Inversely, a quick way to show that a character is stupid is have him not know what pi is at all: "Apple or cherry?"
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!!Examples

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Anime ]]

*In the ''CowboyBebop'' movie, TeenGenius Ed sings a little song that involves reciting pi.
*''SayonaraZetsubouSensei'' had a kid recite the first few digits of pi...and get excessively hyped for this feat.
* Kyon of ''SuzumiyaHaruhi'' supposes that the Intergrated Data Entity is smart enough that it "could calculate pi to the hundred millionth decimal point in just two seconds and do all sorts of advanced tricks."
* The first episode of ''JigokuShoujo [[OddlyNamedSequel Mitsuganae]]'' had Enma Ai ask the person she was taking to hell (a teacher) to recite pi while ferrying him there.
* One of [[ThePrinceOfTennis Sadaharu Inui]]'s {{Image Song}}s has him reciting pi.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* In ''The Ancestral Trail'', Richard defeats Madelbiot by asking him "What is the complete value of pi?"
* The numbers-obsessed Mr. Bent from the {{Discworld}} book ''Making Money'' mentions that he'd mastered all the numbers except pi, but was working on it in his spare time and was sure he'd crack it soon.
* In Carl Sagan's ''Contact'' it is discovered that at a particular distant point of the base 11 expression of pi a long sequence of 0 and 1's occurs that forms a bitmap of a circle. (Incidentially, pi is believed to be a normal number, which means that any sequence of numbers will eventually occur, with a frequency that corresponds to its random probability.)
* [[http://www.cadaeic.net/cadintro.htm Cadaeic Cadenza]], a pi mnemonic taken to 14 chapters and 3835 digits, containing "Pilish" imitations of ''The Raven'', ''Hamlet'', etc.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* This is the motif of Darren Aronofsky's film ''Pi''. The protagonist is a MadMathematician who seems to discover the number to end all numbers, the number which holds the Meaning of Life.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* On ''StargateAtlantis'', Rodney tracked his memory loss by reciting pi to twelve places every so often.
* In an episode of ''{{Sliders}}'', Quinn Mallory recites pi to 13 places while playing a full-contact trivia/ball game on a giant Othello board.
* The Doctor reels off the ''square root of pi'' to a large number of digits in the ''DoctorWho'' episode "Midnight".
** And the woman who's copying everything he says recites it too. At the same time. ''Out of sync by several digits.''
* Walter from ''{{Fringe}}'' recited pi to 101 places to help him sleep.
** And the code to a combination lock on his old garage is 314159.
* Practically an inversion: in ''{{Stargate SG 1}}'', the Asgard test for prospective primitive species seeking their guidance requires them to only know pi to five places, by recognizing that "314159" is related to the diameter of a circle.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Music ]]

*Weird Al's White & Nerdy- "My myspace page is so totally pimped out/ Got people beggin' for my top 8 spaces/ '''Yo, I know pi to a thousand places'''/ Ain't got no grills, but I still wear braces..."
* KateBush wrote a song called "π", about a mathematician who's fascinated with the number, and some verses consist of her singing a few hundred digits.
* The Hard N Phirm song linked above is really more a parody of this.
* Some mixes of Freezepop's song Science Genius Girl feature Liz Enthusiasm singing the first 30 digits of pi.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Newspaper Comics ]]

*One strip of ''{{Foxtrot}}'' had Jason Fox reciting enough digits of pi to fill several panels.
**Another strip had a scene at a nerd camp that Jason and Marcus were attending. When a kid is late for Roll Call, the counselor tells him to do a pushup and recite pi to thirty places.
* In ''Monty'', when Robotman disappears, he is replaced by an alien robot whose full name is 3.1415... ...but his friends may call him Mr Pi. It is used for a few gags on how advanced these robots are, compared to humans.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

*Moe the Clown does this in the second ''PhoenixWrightAceAttorney'' game. It isn't to show intelligence, it's just one of [[PungeonMaster his many puns]].
* Minamimoto from ''TheWorldEndsWithYou'' thinks you're all so zetta slow for not listing how he can not only recite Pi to [[strike:a hundred]] '''156''' places, but use it as [[FormulaicMagic a massive attack]] so strong that [[spoiler:CrystalDragonJesus had to retreat to another universe]].
** "Pi-Face" is also his nickname, and his HP from the two different times you fight are 3141 and 5926.
* In ''RatchetAndClank: Going Commando'', Clank gets repaired by Ratchet, and nearly speaks the ''final'' digit of Pi when he wakes up.
* In ''{{Tales of the Abyss}}'', Lorelei's fonon frequency is Pi.
* In [[TouhouProject Mountain of Faith]], [[CuteWitch Marisa]], getting bored of going through the stages, grumbles that she could recite pi to a thousand places by the time she got to her destination. [[{{Baka}} Cirno]], in [[{{doujinshi}} "A Genius Comes When You Least Expect!"]], one-ups her by claiming to know pi's EXACT value (the last digit, is, of course, [[MemeticMutation 9]]).
** If Cirno says so, than it must be true.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

* [[http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/031208/how-many-digits-of-pi-do-you-know.gif This]] ''Toothpaste For Dinner'' cartoon.
* According to [[http://nocona.comicgenesis.com/d/20061229.html this]] Nothing Comes Naturally strip, Cerine regularly uses pi as a password.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

*On ''TheSimpsons'', some girls on a playground of a school for the gifted play hopscotch, singing, "Cross my heart and hope to die / Here's the digits that make pi / 3.1415926535897932384...".
**Also, Apu mentions he can recite Pi to 40,000 places as proof as his excellent memory, correctly stating that the last digit is a 1. Homer throws in an obligatory "[[IncrediblyLamePun mmmmm, pi]]" here.
**Professor Frink shouts out "Pi is exactly 3!" to silence an audience of rowdy Scientists.
*In an episode of ''CountDuckula'', there was a character who had memorised pi to a ridiculous number of places. Someone asked him about this and he started demonstrating. Every time the scene cut back to him for the remainder of the episode, he was still reciting.
*One episode of ''TheBatman'' involved a bitter ex-child genius forcing the people who fixed the game where he lost to play a mock game show. Rules were simple- everyone gets one question, on any topic. They win and he lets them go free if they can ask him a question he doesn't know the answer to. One of them tries asking him the exact value of pi- he dismisses the question as being impossible to answer, but in the name of being a fair sport, he recites the first one hundred digits just to prove he's not weaseling out of it. [[spoiler: Batman ruins the scheme by asking him "Who is the Batman?"]]
* Reversed in a ''PinkyAndTheBrain'' short on ''{{Animaniacs}}''. Brain tells Pinky to ask him any question:
-->'''Pinky:''' All right, what is Pie?
-->'''Brain:''' Pi is a mathematical constant equal to the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter with an approximate value of 3.14159265. Now ask me something difficult.
* A ''{{Futurama}}'' episode (or was it a comic?) mentions the last digit of Pi as a game show question.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* In Richard Feynman's memoirs, he talks about his days safecracking at the atomic research labs at Los Alamos. The key? Everyone set their safe combinations to 31-41-59 (or occasionally, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulers_number 27-18-28]]).
** Richard Feynman also discovered (or at least was the first to comment on) the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_Point Feynman point]], a string of 6 digits beginning at the 762nd digit of pi, all of which are "9". Feynman joked that if he had a good enough memory, he'd quote the first 767 digits of pi, ending "9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_decimal and so on...]]"
* Daniel Tammet, an Asperger's savant, holds the current European record of reciting 22,514 digits from memory. He describes the experience in his autobiography, ''Born on a Blue Day''.
* Hey kids, here's a fun tip! If you want to impress/intimidate people with your mathematical knowledge, try memorizing the first 10 or so digits of pi, and listing those off before improvising a string of random-sounding numbers. Odds are, people are going to take your word for it after 3.141, so your gibberish numbers will seem like exhaustively memorized fact. Ladies love it!
**Go ahead, try it. This lady will correct you.
**That won't fly in this part of the internet, kid.
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