History Main / MouthfulOfPi

* In ''ComicStrip/PearlsBeforeSwine'', Goat tries to recite pi as a pickup line. [[http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2010-10-20/ It doesn't work.]]

** The numbers-obsessed Mr. Bent from ''Discworld/MakingMoney'' mentions that he'd mastered all the numbers except pi, but was working on it in his spare time and was sure it would give in sooner or later.
** Inverted in Moist's previous adventure, ''Discworld/GoingPostal''. The Post Office's old sorting engine was designed by the infamous Bergholt Stuttley "Bloody Stupid" Johnson, who decided that pi was untidy, what with all that "never ending" nonsense, and therefore designed the crucial cog of the engine to have a pi that was exactly 3. This was all well and good until they started getting letters that hadn't been written yet, and then letters that would have gotten written if the writer hadn't written a different letter instead, and then letters that would never have been written in this particular leg of the Trousers of Time but were starting to bleed over from other legs because the engine was hurting for things to sort.

* [[http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/031208/how-many-digits-of-pi-do-you-know.gif This]] ''Toothpaste For Dinner'' cartoon.

* [[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1777 This]] ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'' Comic.

-->'''46''': What? Because I'm a robot I'm automatically good at math? That's just stupid!
-->'''Bob''': What's the 22nd decimal of π?
-->'''46''': 6. Damnit!

** Inverted in another episode where Professor Farnsworth is trying to get the attention of a room full of scientists all talking to each other. After repeatedly failing, he resorts to shouting "'''PI IS EXACTLY THREE!'''" and they immediately all turn to him and gasp in horror.

** Professor Frink shouts out "Pi is exactly 3!" to shock an audience of rowdy scientists into silence, apologizing afterward for taking such extreme measures.

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. With its endless parade of decimal digits, π has both mystique and geek cred--it has its own [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_Day holiday]], 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 [[Film/{{Pi}} 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[[superscript:-52]], about 2.168×10[[superscript:-15]], so about fifteen 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[[note]]And due to the effects of General Relativity, you would get the wrong answer anyway[[/note]], while only 42 are needed to find the circumference of a circle the size of the entire universe to within less than the diameter of a single proton. There's not much point in memorizing a hundred places other than to [[GoodWithNumbers show off]]. (And indeed, after that many digits you can use whatever ''wrong'' digits you want because the math will still be pretty darn close--though you'll have a lot of mathematicians gritting their teeth…) For obvious reasons, this is a go-to OverlyLongGag.

!!Examples

* DiscussedTrope in a ''ComicBook/TheCartoonHistoryOfTheUniverse'' footnote -- the author believes that the accuracy of Pi is a pretty good indicator of a civilization's general mathematical/scientific ability. He then goes on to point out that Literature/TheBible specifies that the dimensions of the bronze basin for the Temple should be 10 cubits across, and 30 cubits around, putting the value of Pi at '''exactly''' three.

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* Walter from ''Series/{{Fringe}}'' recited pi to 101 places to help him sleep. And the code to a combination lock on his old garage is 314159. And in ''The Plateau'', video of a mentally impaired man who's been made intelligent by an experimental drug trial show him reciting the digits of pi to 1000 decimal places while solving differential equations in his head.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* ''ComicStrip/{{Foxtrot}}'':
** One strip had Jason Fox reciting enough digits of pi to fill several panels after Paige asks him what it is. In the last panel, implied to take place hours later with Jason still reciting, she exclaims, "Mother, how is this MY fault?"
** 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.
** Another strip involved hiking the football on the count of pi. Naturally, they never got around to actually hiking the ball.
* In ''ComicStrip/{{Monty}}'', when Robotman disappears, he is replaced by an alien human hybrid whose full name is 3.1415..., but his friends call him Mr Pi. Because the name was given to him as an insult he later changes it to Dave.
* A mostly forgotten character in ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' was 5, a kid whose family had numbers instead of names. In one strip where he appeared, Linus asked Charlie Brown what sort of name he'd like if that were the case with everyone:
-->'''Charlie Brown:''' How about 3.14159?
-->'''Linus:''' I don't know, Charlie Brown... I have a feeling that every Tom, Dick, and Harry would be called 3.14159!
* In ''ComicStrip/PearlsBeforeSwine'', Goat tries to recite pi as a pickup line. [[http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2010-10-20/ It doesn't work.]]
[[/folder]]

** Another strip involved hiking the football on the count of pi. Naturally, they didn't get that far.

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. With its endless parade of decimal digits, π 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 [[Film/{{Pi}} 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[[note]]And due to the effects of General Relativity, you would get the wrong answer anyway[[/note]], while only 42[[MemeticMutation (?)]] are needed to find the circumference of a circle the size of the entire universe to within less than the diameter of a single proton. There's not much point in memorizing a hundred places other than to [[GoodWithNumbers show off]]. (And indeed, after that many digits you can use whatever ''wrong'' digits you want because the math will still be pretty darn close--though you'll have a lot of mathematicians gritting their teeth…) For obvious reasons, this is a go-to OverlyLongGag.

** Professor Frink shouts out "Pi is exactly 3!" to silence an audience of rowdy scientists, apologizing afterward for taking such extreme measures.

* In ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' episode "The Thanksgiving Decoupling", a drunken Sheldon shows off by burping pi. We only hear him get to "...23846", which would be the twenty-first place.

[[caption-width-right:350:96 digits. Top that.[[note]]He goes on for another speech bubble's worth of digits.[[/note]]]]

* On ''Series/StargateAtlantis'', Rodney tracked his memory loss by reciting pi to twelve places every so often.
* In an episode of ''Series/{{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 ''[[UpToEleven square root of pi]]'' to thirty decimal places[[note]]1.772453850905516027298167483341[[/note]] in the episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E10Midnight "Midnight"]]. And the possessed woman who's [[StopCopyingMe copying everything he says]] recites it too. At the same time. ''Out of sync by several digits.'' By now everyone's realized that something is very wrong with the woman, but it's at this point when they start getting suspicious of the Doctor, too. Completely PlayedForDrama.
** In the original series episode [[Recap/DoctorWho20thASTheFiveDoctors "The Five Doctors"]] the correct path across a trapped chessboard is based on pi... somehow. The Master has it memorized well enough to ''dance'' across the chessboard, and the First Doctor knows enough to get himself and Tegan across.

* Happens in ''Series/CuteyHoneyTheLive'' to show that Honey Kisaragi/Cutey Honey and Miki Saotome/Sister Miki are not normal.
* An episode of ''Series/ClarissaExplainsItAll'' featured the title character and her brother on a game show, where he blows the question "What is pi?" with the standard flavors-of-pi mistake. Since he prides himself on being a child prodigy, and hates when people prove he's not, this sends him into a period of stunned shock...from which he resurfaces in time to interrupt his sister and prevent her from winning them the game.

* As noted in the page quote, Fred from ''Series/{{Angel}}'' has memorized 452 digits of pi. In the same scene the quote comes from, she scares away a homeless guy by reciting it.
* In the first episode of ''Series/{{Malcolm in the Middle}}'', on Malcolm's first day in the gifted class, Eraserhead challenges him to recite π to 50 places. Malcolm shoos him away.
* ''Series/{{Aibou}}'' - a murdered genius mathematician leaves behind a series of apparent nonsense words that actually form a mnemonic for the first several digits of pi as a DyingMessage.
* In ''{{Series/The Librarians|2014}}'' "And the Apple of Discord," Flynn attempts to LogicBomb the Apple-influenced Cassandra by asking her the last digit of pi, but Cassandra simply scoffs at the attempt. [[GeniusBruiser Jacob]] has better success when he brings up [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(mathematical_constant) Euler's number]] instead (and claims the last digit is 6).
* ''Series/TheGenius'': this reality game show presents challenges based on math and memorization. When Pi digits sequence eventually pops up as way to win the game there is a contestant who have committed 100 first digits of Pi to memory. "For fun".

** Professor Frink shouts out "Pi is exactly 3!" to silence an audience of rowdy Scientists, apologizing afterward for taking such extreme measures.

* [[http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/031208/how-many-digits-of-pi-do-you-know.gif This]] ''Webcomic/ToothpasteForDinner'' cartoon.
* According to [[http://nocona.prismaticmedia.com/?p=64 this]] ''Webcomic/NothingComesNaturally'' strip, Cerine regularly uses pi as a password.

* ''LoadingReadyRun's'' [=CheckPoint=] has Graham start to recite all the digits of pi in honor of it being Pi Day, cuts to "Time passes", and then to him finishing, and commenting that it was shorter than he thought. The last number was a 6.

* "[[ClassicDisneyShort Donald In Mathmagic Land]]" has a circular bird who recites digits of pi. ''And gets them wrong''.

[[caption-width-right:350:96 digits. Top that.[[labelnote:*]]He goes on for another speech bubble's worth of digits.[[/labelnote]]]]

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. With its endless parade of decimal digits, π 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 [[Film/{{Pi}} 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?

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[[note]]And due to the effects of General Relativity, you would get the wrong answer anyway[[/note]], while only 42[[MemeticMutation (?)]] are needed to find the circumference of a circle the size of the entire universe to within less than the diameter of a single proton. There's not much point in memorizing a hundred places other than to [[GoodWithNumbers show off]]. (And indeed, after that many digits you can use whatever ''wrong'' digits you want because the math will still be pretty darn close - though you'll have a lot of mathematicians gritting their teeth...) For obvious reasons, this is a go-to OverlyLongGag.

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

[[folder:{{Anime}} and Manga]]

* This is the motif of Creator/DarrenAronofsky's film ''Film/{{Pi}}''. The protagonist is a MadMathematician who seems to discover a 216-digit number that holds the Meaning of Life. In the climax of the film, he recites the numbers while having a breakdown. Ironically, the actual number pi appears nowhere in the movie except the opening credits.

** The Doctor reels off the ''[[UpToEleven square root of pi]]'' to thirty decimal places in the episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E10Midnight "Midnight"]]. And the possessed woman who's [[StopCopyingMe copying everything he says]] recites it too. At the same time. ''Out of sync by several digits.'' By now everyone's realized that something is very wrong with the woman, but it's at this point when they start getting suspicious of the Doctor, too. Completely PlayedForDrama.

** The Doctor reels off the ''square root of pi'' to thirty decimal places in the episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E10Midnight "Midnight"]]. And the possessed woman who's [[StopCopyingMe copying everything he says]] recites it too. At the same time. ''Out of sync by several digits.'' By now everyone's realized that something is very wrong with the woman, but it's at this point when they start getting suspicious of the Doctor, too. Completely PlayedForDrama.