The Pi Trivia Game

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Finally this is your chance to pay tribute to the magnificent transcendental number that we have all grown to love! Here are 25 questions (given to you 5 at a time), picked randomly from my pi question database. Get ready for the thrill of your lifetime, the ultimate challenge, The Pi Trivia Game!

1. The following are all mnemonics for remembering the first few digits of pi (the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit of pi). Which of these was written in 1995 by Michael Keith?

Sir, I send a rhyme excelling
in sacred truth and rigid spelling.
Numerical sprites elucidate
For me the lexicon's dull weight.
Now I, even I, would celebrate
In rhymes inapt, the great
Immortal Syracusan, rivaled nevermore,
Who in his wondrous lore,Passed on before,Left men his guidance
How to circles mensurate.
But a time I spent wandering in bloomy night; Yon tower, tinkling chimewise, loftily opportune.
Out, up, and together came sudden to Sunday rite,
The one solemnly off to correct plenilune.
How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. All of thy geometry, Herr Planck, is fairly hard.
Poe, E. -
Near A Raven
Midnights so dreary, tired and weary,
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
"This", I whispered quietly, "I ignore".

2. The world pi-recitation record is held by Chao Lu of China. He was able to recite pi from memory to approximately how many decimal places?

Six thousand.
Seventeen million.
Three hundred fourteen thousand one hundred fifty nine.
Five hundred.
Sixty-eight thousand.

3. Consider the following series of natural numbers, constructed by taking successively larger strings of digits from the beginning of the decimal expansion of the number pi:
3, 31, 314, 3141, 31415, 314159, 3141592, etc.
Out of the first 1000 numbers in this series, how many are primes? (for example, the first two numbers, 3 and 31, are both primes)

48
34
4
21
58

4. The physicist Willebrord Snellius (1580-1626) found polygons which better approximated the perimeter of circles than do inscribed and circumscribed polygons. Better perimeter approximations lead to more quickly converging pi approximations. What scientific discovery is Snellius best known for?

the laws of reflection and refraction
general relativity
exploding pop-tarts
the photoelectric effect
the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics

5. Which of the following is NOT equal to pi?

4 * the integral from 0 to 1 of sqrt(1 - x^2)dx
4 * arctan 1
the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter
(3/4) * the number of radians in a 270 degree angle
2 * the number of radians in a right angle

eve@eveandersson.com