How to Memorize Pi: The Easy Way to 100 Digits

You can learn the first 15 digits of pi tonight with one sentence. To go further, to 100 digits or more, you turn the digits into pictures and place them along a route through your home. That is how the people who have recited tens of thousands of digits did it. This guide shows both, step by step, with the first 100 digits ready to learn.

Quick Answer

1. Up to 15 digits: learn a pi sentence, where each word's length is the next digit.
2. Up to about 30 digits: split the digits into groups of four and learn them with rhythm.
3. 100 digits and beyond: turn each pair of digits into a picture (the Major System) and place the pictures on a route you know (a memory palace).
4. Keep it: recite from memory the next day, then after three days, then after a week.

The First 100 Digits of Pi

Here are the first 100 decimal places, the digits after "3.", in lines of ten. Each line is split in half to make it easier to read. Every method below uses the same lines.

As one string: 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679

How Many Digits Should You Learn?

Pick a goal before you start. It decides which method to use.

The "NASA" line is real. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory says it uses 15 decimal places, 3.141592653589793, for its most accurate navigation of spacecraft between planets. Even that is far more than most science needs. Anything past it is a memory challenge, not a maths need, and that is what makes it fun.

Method 1: A Pi Sentence (the First 15 Digits)

A pi sentence, sometimes called a "piem", is a sentence where the number of letters in each word gives you the next digit. You remember the sentence, then count the letters. The shortest well-known one gives eight digits:

The most famous one, often credited to the physicist Sir James Jeans, gives fifteen:

How to learn it: say the sentence out loud five times. Then write the digits from it without looking, counting the letters on your fingers. After a day or two, you stop counting and the digits come straight from the words.

Method 2: Groups of Four (Up to About 30 Digits)

Your short-term memory holds only a handful of items at once. If you treat 1415 as one item instead of four, you can hold more. This is called chunking.

3. 1415 · 9265 · 3589 · 7932 · 3846 · 2643 · 3832 · 7950

1. Say the first two groups out loud with a beat, like a phone number: "fourteen fifteen, ninety-two sixty-five".
2. Cover them and say them again. Write them down to check.
3. Add one new group only when the old ones are perfect.
4. Each time, start again from "3." so the groups join into one chain.

This is how most people learn their first 20 or 30 digits. Past that, the groups start to blur: was it 3832 or 3823? Digits have no meaning, so there is nothing to hold them in place. The next method gives them a meaning.

Method 3: Pictures in a Memory Palace (100 Digits and Beyond)

This is the method used by memory athletes and pi record holders. It has two parts. The Major System turns numbers into pictures, because a picture is far easier to remember than a digit. The memory palace keeps the pictures in the right order, because you leave each one at a place on a route you already know.

Step 1: Turn each pair of digits into a word

In the Major System, each digit is a sound: 1 is T or D, 2 is N, 3 is M, 4 is R, 5 is L, 6 is J, SH or CH, 7 is K or G, 8 is F or V, 9 is P or B, and 0 is S or Z. Vowels are free. So 14 is T + R, which makes tyre, and 15 is D + L, which makes doll.

You do not need to work these out yourself. The words below come from our Major System list, and the whole 100 digits need only 43 different words, because some pairs come up more than once.

Step 2: Choose a route with ten rooms

Walk through your home in your mind and pick ten rooms or areas, in the order you would walk through them. In each room, pick five things in order, such as a door, a chair, a window. That is 50 stops, one for each pair of digits. One line of ten digits goes in each room. If you ever get lost, you know which line you are in. The memory palace examples show how to pick good stops.

Step 3: Place one picture at each stop

Make each picture big, strange and doing something to its stop. Here are the first 20 decimals in two rooms:

Step 4: Walk the route and read the digits back

Close your eyes and walk to the front door. What hit it? A tyre: T R, 14. What is on the doormat? A doll: D L, 15. Keep walking and write each pair down. When you finish a room, check the line against the table. Fix any wrong picture by making it stronger, then walk the room again.

All 100 Digits as Words

Here is the full set: one line of ten digits per room, one word per stop. Swap in your own word for any pair if another picture comes to you more easily. The best word is the one you can see clearly.

The Major System guide uses the first digits of pi as its example too, but pairs them from the 3 (31, 41, 59). Here the pairs start after the decimal point, so 100 decimals make exactly 50 words.

A One-Week Plan to Memorize 100 Digits

Fifteen to twenty minutes a day is enough. The secret is reviewing at the right times, not studying for hours. See spaced repetition for why this works.

After that, recite the 100 digits once after a week, then once a month. Each review takes a few minutes and keeps the route fresh. The Pi Trainer times you and keeps your best, and its Learn view shows the words for any hundred decimals up to 10,000.

Tips That Make It Easier

• Write to check, do not just read. Recalling the digits yourself fixes them far better than looking at them again. See active recall.
• Use a place you know very well. Your own home works best, because you never have to think about what comes next.
• Make the pictures move. A tyre that crashes into the door is easier to remember than a tyre standing next to it. Visualization covers this.
• Learn the Major System first if you want to go far. For the first 100 digits you can use the words above. For 1,000 digits you need your own full list from 00 to 99.
• Look forward to decimal 762. There pi has six 9s in a row, a spot known as the Feynman point. It is a fun next goal once you have the first 100.

Pi Memorization World Records

Two lists track pi records, and they do not agree on first place. The official recognition comes from Guinness World Records. The Pi World Ranking List is a larger list of recitations kept by enthusiasts.

• Rajveer Meena recited 70,000 decimal places at VIT University in Vellore, India, on 21 March 2015. Guinness says he wore a blindfold throughout, and the recall took nearly 10 hours.
• Suresh Kumar Sharma recited 70,030 digits on 21 October 2015, which took 17 hours and 14 minutes, according to the Pi World Ranking List.
• Akira Haraguchi of Japan has claimed more than 100,000 digits, first in 2006. His claims have not been verified by Guinness, so neither list counts them.

Pi recitation is not an event at memory championships. Championships use random digits, learned in five minutes, 15 minutes or an hour. See how many digits can you memorize for how the two kinds of record compare, and memory sport world records for the event records.

Pi Day: 14 March

Pi Day is held on 14 March, because the date is written 3/14 in the United States. The physicist Larry Shaw started it at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1988. In 2019, UNESCO named the same day the International Day of Mathematics. Many schools hold pi recitation contests on the day, and this guide is a good way to prepare. Start a week before, and follow the plan above.

Use the Same Skill on Other Numbers

Once you can learn pi this way, you can learn any number: a phone number, a bank card, a list of dates. The pictures and the route are the same. Only the digits change. See how to memorize numbers for the full method.

If you enjoy it, try a real memory championship event. Speed Numbers gives you rows of random digits and five minutes to learn as many as you can. Every event has a level ladder, so you can start small and see your score grow.

Frequently Asked Questions

Core Takeaways

1. A pi sentence is the quickest way to the first 15 digits.
2. Groups of four take you to about 30 digits.
3. For 100 digits or more, turn digit pairs into pictures and place them along a route in your home.
4. The first 100 decimals need 50 stops in ten rooms, and only 43 different words.
5. Review after a day, three days and a week, and the digits will stay.

Related Guides

• Pi Trainer — recite pi from memory and see where you stopped. Free, no account needed.
• Major System — the full 00 to 99 list and how to build your own.
• Method of Loci — how to build a memory palace that lasts.
• How to Memorize Numbers — from a phone number to a thousand digits.
• Memory Training for Beginners — a four-week plan, fifteen minutes a day.

Sources

Read on 3 November 2026: Guinness World Records, "Most Pi places memorised"; the Pi World Ranking List; NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, "How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need?"; Wikipedia, Piphilology and Pi Day. The digits on this page are checked against a computed value of pi.