Nine-year-old Lucas Mason Yao loves the Vancouver Canucks, his pet bunny Chomp and pi, the mathematical constant thatSA国际影视传媒檚 celebrated every March 14 around the world.
Yao, from Pitt Meadows, B.C., has memorized the ratio between a circleSA国际影视传媒檚 circumference and its diameter to 2,030 digits, far beyond the 3.14 thatSA国际影视传媒檚 close enough for most people.
The feat that he achieved last year took 23 minutes to recite and earned him 115th place on the world ranking for pi memorization, a list thatSA国际影视传媒檚 topped by a man from India who has memorized it to more than 70,000 digits.
Yao said he has a good memory and has been fascinated by numbers since he was a baby.
SA国际影视传媒淚 saw pi one day and I was like, I wanted to learn it,SA国际影视传媒� said Yao.
His mother Cindy Liu said Lucas started memorizing pi in 2020 as a way to beat boredom during the pandemic, and he went from 1,000 digits to 2,000 in just a few days last year.
SA国际影视传媒淗eSA国际影视传媒檚 always looking for challenges and fun stuff to do,SA国际影视传媒� said Liu. SA国际影视传媒淗e surprises me all the time.SA国际影视传媒�
They watched videos of people doing the pi challenge on YouTube and when her son tried it out, he loved it, she said.
SA国际影视传媒淪o, afterward, he just kept going and he asked me about it too, SA国际影视传媒榦h, do we want to go to 100, 500, or 1,000,SA国际影视传媒� and he just gets excited every time we try new digits,SA国际影视传媒� she added.
Yao, who is the fifth-ranked Canadian on the world pi memorization list, said he and his family will be celebrating Pi Day with a pie that has a pi symbol cut into the crust.
Liu said her sonSA国际影视传媒檚 ability to recite pi to more than 2,000 digits isnSA国际影视传媒檛 his full potential and she believes heSA国际影视传媒檒l break his own record in the future.
But Liu said she also doesnSA国际影视传媒檛 want him to spend too much time in the pi challenge.
The boy is also an accomplished pianist, playing at Carnegie Hall in New York when he was five after winning the Crescendo International Music Competition.
Liu said her son has excelled at numbers ever since he was a baby.
He started showing curiosity for numbers when he was only seven days old, and he could count to 100 at two, she said.
