Student wows with record-breaking memory on Pi day

The number Pi is many digits long, but not as storied as the competition champion of Cornelius Lopez’s seventh-grade math class this year, who memorized and recited 277 digits of it. Meet Eva Cain, musical theater aficionado and certified numbers whiz.

Eva’s impressive feat doesn’t surprise her mother, Lidunn Cain: The Cain children have demonstrated their aptitude for mental rigmarole, both in the classroom and at the dinner table.

Lars, Eva’s older brother, would often recite Pi when the family sat down for meals together.

“One day Eva said, ‘I want to do it, too.’ She was up to 50; he was up to 180. And then she heard about this competition and wanted to break the school record,” said Cain.

That was several years ago, but earlier this March, Eva got her chance and slayed both the classroom record from last year and school record from 2003 for most digits of Pi memorized.

“She just decided that she was going to beat it, and she did,” said Cain.

Cain says that Eva’s musical theater background may help her with recall and memorization, but she isn’t sure what her daughter’s secret is.

“The most remarkable thing to me is that they rattle off a 100 things, and then they say the wrong number, and you correct it, and then they just continue; they don’t start over,” she said.

“I have wonderful kids. Both of them,” she added.

Eva credits her older brother for inspiring her to want to test the bounds of her memory.

“Well, I’ve been memorizing Pi for years now, and I think it’s fun,” she said. “Some people think I have a photographic memory, but I don’t. I’ve been asked that, and I’m like, no I don’t. I just have a good memory,” she said.

Lopez, Eva’s math teacher, says that the reach of Pi extends much farther than even the sum of its parts.

“Memorizing the digits of Pi is something that takes place pretty much everywhere now. If you go on the internet, there are an endless number of videos on Pi and what it is, and the digits of Pi and getting obsessed with reciting them and how many digits of Pi people can memorize,” he said.

“It’s been for fun,” said Lopez of the competition. “A lot of it’s been unofficial.”

Lopez was especially excited for Eva and other students in his class who committed themselves to go farther than they may have imagined possible.

“The assignment this year was to set a goal and to work to meet it, and the kids realize they can set their own goal, and they say, ‘Gosh, I’ll memorize two digits.’ And they achieve that goal. And other kids take it on as a challenge, and take it on as much as they can,” he said.

Eva says that being Cinderella’s understudy for an upcoming production affords her memory a lot of help, and she can’t wait to take on her next challenges: memorizing the periodic table of elements and all of the American presidents.

“Honestly, I don’t have that much of an idea of what I want to do when I grow up. I think I’m a lot better with numbers than words in general,” she said.

For her reward, Eva won a graphic T-shirt celebrating March 14, when Pi Day is annually observed, and a coordinating baseball cap.