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Memorizing Pi to 100 Digits

Published on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 in , , , ,



This is a quick tutorial on how to memorize hundreds of digits of Pi, as originally taught in Arthur Benjamin's book, Secrets of Mental Math.

Before beginning, you should be familiar with both the Link System and Major/Peg System, as this video kind of glosses over them.

Here are the sentences used to remember the first 100 digits of Pi:

  • My turtle Pancho will, my love, pick up my new mover Ginger.
  • My movie monkey plays in a favorite bucket.
  • Ship my monkeypuppy Michael to Sullivan's backrubber.
  • A really open music video cheers Jenny F. Jones.
  • Have a baby fish knife so Marvin will marinate the goose chick.
To take these systems even farther, and to learn them in AND out of order, check out my 400 Digits of Pi tutorial in the Mental Gym.

Video Format:
YouTube

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Welcome Scam School Viewers!

Published on Wednesday, September 15, 2010 in , ,

Note to Scam School viewers: Welcome! This is just the video portion of my site. Check out the main Grey Matters blog by clicking here.



In the September 15th episdoe of Scam School, as shown above, Brian Brushwood gives a link to this site as part of the credits!

Thank you for the special mention, Brian! It's especially generous considering that so many other people sent it in.

I talk about this episode in more detail in my post, Scam School Meets Grey Matters...Again!.

Video Format: YouTube

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Grey Matters Internet TV!

Published on Sunday, December 21, 2008 in

(Mirrored from the Grey Matters Blog)

Get MiroGrey Matters now has an internet TV channel available on Miro!

Miro, if you're not familiar with it, is a freeware program that acts as a sort of DVR for internet videos, and that can handle almost any video format you throw at it. Besides using it to watch videos you already have saved to your hard drive, you can search several video sources at once, and download those to watch at your leisure. Yes, Miro even makes it easy to download YouTube videos to your hard drive!

In a similar manner to a DVR, the videos will ordinarily be deleted from your hard drive after a specified amount of time. The default is 6 days, but you can specify storage times from 3 hours to 1 month. Of course, if you find a favorite, you can easily tell Miro to keep it on your hard drive permanently. Miro will both manage your hard drive space (you can tell it to keep a certain amount of hard drive space free) and organize your video collection.

Another way to discover videos about your interests is Miro channels. These are akin to TV channels, but can be created by anyone on just about any topic! Using Miro to organize these channel can be a great way to keep your favorite podcasts manageable. A Miro channel is basically a specialized type of RSS feed, and they're available for free.

Now, I've tried to keep Grey Matters Videos going, but a blog is proving to be the wrong medium to keep the videos organized. Creating the Grey Matters Miro Channel is a far better medium for what I want to do with Grey Matters Videos.

To take advantage of this new video channel, first download, install and run Miro. If you're just getting it up and running for the first time, you may want to watch the pre-installed Using Miro channel to become familiar with it. To add the Grey Matters Miro Channel, copy the following address:

http://members.cox.net/econalc/files/gmvideosmiro.rss

Next, go to Miro, and from the Channels menu, select Add Channel..., then paste the above address into the box and click OK. As it's brand new, there are only 9 videos from around the web at the moment, including the Martin Gardner documentary I discussed in my previous post. Note that even though it isn't hosted at a site such as YouTube, Miro can still find it, download it and organize it with no additional trouble.

Since it's easier to add a video to a Miro channel than to create a blog entry around it, this video collection will grow over time. I won't be adding all of the videos from Grey Matters Videos, but I will leave that blog up so you can find any past favorites. The purpose of the Grey Matters Miro Channel, however, will be the resource for all the future videos I add.

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Charles Gauci

Published on Monday, July 07, 2008 in , ,



Yes, Charles Gauci is already back on Grey Matters Videos! This time, he's performing a memorization feat of a shuffled deck of cards. Not only is the memorization of the first part of the deck impressive, but so is the finish!

Video Format:
YouTube

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Jonathan Levit

Published on Saturday, June 28, 2008 in ,



Back in December 2007, Jonathan Levit performed at Hollywood's famed Magic Castle. One of the highlights of his performance was this incredible recall of a current magazine he'd memorized! Not only is the ability to recall the details of the magazine incredible, but the engaging and entertaining performance really makes this a piece to behold.

Video Format:
YouTube