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.

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YouTube

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

(Mirrored from the Grey Matters Blog)

Grey 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.

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!

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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.

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Australian performer Charles Gauci here performs a magic square routine he calls Super Sudoku. First, he has people call out various 3-digit numbers, which are placed in a diagonal. These are then totaled, and Mr. Gauci then quickly fills out the remaining squares so as to give that same total in many different directions!

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YouTube

Here's an unusual and amazing feat of memorization by OneManSho! At first, it simply sounds like he's singing an opera in Latin or Italian. Even if you're not into opera, keep watching it! About the middle, you'll realize how familiar the song is, and how impressive a memorization feat this truly is!

OneManSho also performed this same feat with another song, but there are stronger visual clues in this video as to which song he's singing.



This idea has been done before, such as in Weird Al's Amish Paradise video (watch from 2:51 to 3:09), as well as the classic Swedish bookstore scene from Top Secret! (here it is the original way, if you're curious). However, OneManSho is doing it while making sense and without lip-synching!

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YouTube

In our running Wetten, dass ... ? marathon, our next feature is 11-year-old David Öttinger. David is blindfolded, and when given the name of a country somewhere in the world, he can name every country that borders the named country!

If you want to learn this feat yourself, try practicing with Sporcle's geography games.

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YouTube

In our final Wetten, dass ... ? clip for the day, Florian Osmani performs the classic Day of the Week For Any Date feat. 8-year-old Florian bets that he can name the day of the week for any date from October 15, 1582 to December 31, 3499. If you've learned and practiced this feat, see if you can get the dates without looking at the video!

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YouTube

Here's an interesting challenge from Wetten, dass ... ?. Before going on the air, Boris Konrad memorized 5 unsolved Sudoku puzzles. In the clip itself, he is shown 100 solved Sudoku puzzles, and has 4 minutes to identify at least 4 of the 5 puzzles he memorized! Can he do it?

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Here's young Fabrice Becker, performing on Wetten, dass ... ?. Fabrice has memorized each of the pieces from twelve 600-piece puzzles, and bets that, shown any piece from anyone of the puzzles, he can identify that puzzle by its number!

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Windows Media

When searching for information about the Knight's Tour last year, I ran across this ChessBase column and learned about young Xaver Neuhäusler and his appearance on a German TV show called Wetten, dass ... ? (German for Betting, that ... ?), where he performed a blindfolded Knight's Tour!

Back in may of last year, I actually linked to numerous videos from the show Wetten, dass ... ?, which have since been removed. Fortunately, many of these have been posted on various video sites around the internet. This and the next few entries will be some of the lost files from this German TV show.

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YouTube

Perennial Grey Matters favorite Arthur Benjamin is back! This performance is similar to what he does at his Magic Castle appearances, where you can see him from December 17 to 23. Here, you'll see him square 2-digit, 3-digit and 4-digit numbers faster than a calculator, divines several missing digits, gives the day of the week for any given date, and finishes by squaring a 5-digit number and letting you see the process!

You can find other videos featuring Dr. Benjamin here, here and here. If you would like to learn more about the art of mathemagic, the Grey Matters Store has an entire mathemagic section, and even features Dr. Benjamin's book, Secrets of Mental Math.

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In this video, UK memory expert Susan Percy teaches you how to quickly memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards. At the video link, you can also scroll down and go over the steps in more detail, as well.

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In this video, memory lecturer Bob Gray performs some amazing feats. First, he writes forwards and backwards simultaneously, followed immediately by writing forward and backwards upside-down simultaneously! You can see more of his amazing work at the audio and video section of his site.

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YouTube

After publishing Geek Logik, author Garth Sundem appeared on Good Morning America, to promote it. They took several people who were dealing with major life questions, and applied Garth's equations to their lives. The insights are quite interesting.

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YouTube

This is the complete classic 1970 movie, The Phantom Tollbooth, in 2 parts. As you might guess from the Grey Matters site, the original book and this movie were a big influence on me.

It's simultaneously fun and makes a number of excellent points. Watch the entire movie while it is still available.

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Vimeo

This unknown gentleman from Ghana, identified only as “Computerman”, can recall the day of the week for any date given!

This is a classic memory feat that can be learned with enough practice. Check out my calendar blog posts, as well as my calendar videos for more information on this feat.

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Google Video

Here's a LEGO Mindstorms robot that can scan and solve a randomly-scrambled Rubik's Cube! Check out the full story here.

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YouTube

Check out Will Smith solving a Rubik's Cube in only 55 seconds! He learned how to do this for the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. He was taught by Tyson Mao, who has been featured on this site here and here.

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dailymotion