Sam Stephens Likes a Big Slice of Pi

Name: Sam Stephens, 9th grade

School: Lindbergh High School

Accomplishment: Sam Stephens impressed his honors algebra 2 classmates by reciting 267 digits of the number pi from memory, on March 14 (3/14), Pi Day. The pi recitation contest is an annual tradition in the LHS math department, and all students are invited to participate. For his victory, Sam won a $20 gift certificate to Pi, a local pizza restaurant, and a glass with the pi symbol etched on it.

Key to Awesomeness: This is the second year Sam has won the pi contest, so he said memorizing the number this time around was easier than the first time.

How did he do it? “I memorized numbers in groups of 10, then grouped those groups into sets of 50,” Sam said. Simple as that.

For those who are interested, the first 267 digits of pi are: 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986
28034825342117067982148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102
70193852110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190
914564856692346034