Faster than a calculator

By S. Nagesh Kumar

HYDERABAD, MAY 11. He is like any other adolescent - a bit gangling, unsure of his future but aspiring to become a doctor. Wait a minute. A doctor! Isn't he seeking an entry into the Guinness Book of Records for his speed arithmetic and phenomenal memory.

Yes. G. Uday Shankar of Nizamabad, better known as the `pi' boy, can recite from memory the first 7,000 decimal places of the decimal expansion of `pi', both backwards and forwards.

Show him a list of 30 random binary digits for three seconds on a computer and he can correctly recall all of them in the original order. He gives the value of the square, cube and fourth powers of any two digit number faster than a calculator.

He can memorise a set of 10 names of people and their respective 10 digit telephone numbers in 90 seconds. If he is given randomly-placed letters of the English alphabet, he can recall them forwards and tell the letter at a given position in the shortest possible time. The 16-year-old has already had his share of limelight in the media. He has been listed in the Limca Book of Records for random memorising of `pi' up to 5,000 digits and, lately, up to 7,000 digits. In the process, he has broken the existing record of 2,000 digits of `pi' held by Prof. A. C. Aitken of the Department of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh, U.K.

His next target is the Guinness Book of Records which lists the record of Gert Mittring of Germany for successfully reciting 27 random digits from memory in the correct order. It may not be long before the German is unseated from his position. Uday Shankar performed his feat before Prof. K. Vishwanath, Dean, School of Mathematics & Computer/ Information Sciences, University of Hyderabad, and Dr. Chakravarthy Bhagvati, Reader, who certified his `amazing' abilities.

They noted that he had achieved the memorisation without any special training such as mnemonics but just by occasional practice at home. He now finds little time even for practice as he is busy preparing for next year's EAMCET in a residential college in Guntur.

It all started when his kid sister playfully asked Uday Shankar whether he could repeat `feats of memory' while they were watching a TV programme in June 1999. To the amazement of both, he recalled 100 random digits backwards and forwards within four minutes. Since then, there has been no looking back and recently he was chosen for the `Ugadi Puraskar' - 2001 by the Madras Telugu Academy which conferred him the title - `digital ashtavadhani'!

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