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| April 5, 2006
| Math
FactID: 547
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Rated
3.76 stars
from 55 votes
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Gaurav Rajav, a 15-year old Virginia high school student, recited 8,784 digits of Pi — the non-repeating and non-terminating decimal — likely placing him among the top Pi-reciters in the world.
He had hoped to recite 10,790 digits and set a record in the United States and North America. He says, "I'm kind of disappointed, but I guess I did OK."
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|  Source: USA Today article via Lynn Lowry
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| February 22, 2006
| Math
FactID: 13
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Rated
4.08 stars
from 50 votes
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In a room full of 23 people, there is a 50%
chance that two people have the same birthday. Strange.
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| Source: Wolfram Research
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| January 16, 2006
| Math
FactID: 168
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Rated
3.64 stars
from 42 votes
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Around 825 A.D. in Baghdad, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizimi wrote a book called "Kitab al-jabr wa al-muqabalah", which means "The science of restoration and reduction" and stood as the major algebraic work of the period.
The word "algebra" comes from this title ("al-jabr"), since this was the first textbook used in Europe for this subject.
The word "algorithm" is a distortion of al-Khwarizmi's name.
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| Source: "The Golden Ratio" by Mario Livio
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| January 6, 2006
| Math
FactID: 517
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Rated
4.37 stars
from 38 votes
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The = sign ("equals sign") was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing "is equal to" in his equations. He chose the two lines because "noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle".
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Email Fact | IM Fact
| Source: BBC via Aaron Fulkerson
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| March 1, 2005
| Math
FactID: 256
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Rated
4.03 stars
from 38 votes
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111,111,111
x 111,111,111
--------------------------
12,345,678,987,654,321
It's a palindrome, just like "Damn, I, Agassi, miss again! Mad!" is.
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| Source: Palindromelist.com
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| February 19, 2005
| Math
FactID: 243
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Rated
3.38 stars
from 26 votes
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What's a Google?
"Googol" is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by a hundred zero's. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web
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| Source: Wikipedia via Udayan Seksaria
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| December 1, 2004
| Math
FactID: 140
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Rated
4.14 stars
from 28 votes
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Gert Mittring, a 38-year-old German with degrees in psychology,
education and computer science, needed only 11.8 seconds to calculate
the 13th root of a 100-digit number in his head, setting
a new record.
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| Source: Associated Press, Quinn McCleery
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| April 28, 2004
| Math
FactID: 26
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Rated
4.39 stars
from 28 votes
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Hiroyuki Goto is the current world record
holder for the most digits of Pi (3.14...) memorized.
He spent nine hours and recited
42,000+ digits correctly in 1995.
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| April 19, 2004
| Math
FactID: 17
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Rated
4.42 stars
from 19 votes
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Pi (value of 3.14...)
is graphically derived as follows:
(1) Draw a Circle.
(2) Measure the length around the circle.
(3) Measure the length across the circle.
(4) Divide the first number by the second and you arrive at
pi .
No matter who you are, what language you speak, where you live
on Earth, what base you use (binary, hexadecimal, decimal),
you still arrive at the same value of pi. No matter where
you live in the universe (human, alien), or what time period
(alongside dinosaurs, before Christ, today, or in a million
years) it will still be the same. It is built into the fabric
of the universe. See the last page of
Contact the book...
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| Source: Contact
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