Earlier this month, Umile was certified as the North American record-holder for memorizing digits of the mathematical constant. He spewed out 12,887 digits, to be exact - a feat that took him 3 hours and 40 minutes.

For those whose math skills are a little fuzzy, that’s the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter…

He professes not to be a math whiz. A filing clerk for a company that handles Medicare bills, he never studied trigonometry and did not attend college. Yet it is clear he has a passion for numbers and puzzles, not to mention a relentless determination and the ability to ignore those who thought he was a little strange.

But why pi?

Because it’s there. Because he wanted to explore the limits of the mind. And because he wanted to hit one for the home team.

Upon surfing the Internet one day in 2004, he found the world-record list and saw that it was dominated by Asians and Europeans. He decided the United States needed another representative…

Umile is far short of the world record of 43,000 that van Koningsveld cites on his list, held by Krishan Chahal of India. He’s even farther from the 67,890 digits listed by the Guinness World Records, a feat accomplished in China.

Source: Ledger-Enquirer
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/16579077.htm