Central Bucks 9th Grader Rattles Off Mind-Blowing 1,017 Digits Of Pi

DOYLESTOWN, PA — Nergis Teke wowed everyone by reciting 447 digits of Pi by memory in 2023. This year, the Central Bucks middle schooler blew everyone away by rattling off a mind-blowing 1,017 digits.

Not bad for a ninth grader who used her memory skills and her love of numbers to meet the challenge, which took place on International Pi Day earlier this month.

It took Nergis 20 minutes to run through all those digits as her teachers kept track of every number so they'd have an accurate record to present to the national competition.

It all played out at the Lenape Middle School where 10 middle school students competed in a National Pi Day competition, an opportunity for math enthusiasts to recite the digits of Pi, currently calculated at more than 9 trillion known digits.

When it was over, Nergis had recited 1,017 digits ranking her 68th in the U.S. and 77th in all of North America in all age groups.

"That was the first time I was able to get to 1,000," said Nergis. "When I was practicing at home I’d always get stuck around 700 digits. I was actually shocked when I was able to get to 1,000.”

To put her accomplishment in perspective, the North American record is currently held by Paul Hearding who recited 16,106 digits in six hours, 52 minutes in 2020, according to the Pi World Ranking List.

“I was happy and proud of myself when I reached 1,000,” said Nergis, adding that she was also relieved because she had heard that one of the other competitors had also set a goal of 1,000 digits.

Her teachers both agreed. It was pretty awesome to watch.

“Last year she did 447, which was shocking,” said Lenape math teacher Angelo Menta. “I knew in the days leading up to it that she had gotten up to 800. I didn’t know she had memorized the next 217. So she blew me out of the water when she kept going and going.

“Every once in a while she would pause for 30 seconds just to be able to go over it again in her brain and she’d pick up right where she’d left off without saying the wrong number, without repeating a number twice," said Menta, who considers Nergis a math and memorization genius. "It was really impressive to see."

Added gifted teacher Jennifer Conver, “I kept expecting her to be done. It was a surprise when she’d pause after a string of numbers to think and then she’d continue. We had the numbers printed out on paper to follow along. After turning the page multiple times you get a greater sense of the magnitude when you’re looking at it physically in front of you.

“Twenty minutes of reciting random numbers. It was a long time,” said Conver.

Her second-closest competitor recited 268 digits.

In the lead-up to the competition, Nergis worked on her memorization skills using as her base the 447 digits she reached last year and building up to her new goal of 1,000.

She stalled, however, at 400 in January and didn't pick it up again until the Sunday before the competition when she realized she was 600 shy of where she wanted to be on her calendar. She said she would lay in bed at night memorizing chunks of numbers at a time.

In the days leading up to the competition, Nergis spent about an hour to an hour and a half each night laying in bed memorizing between 100 and 200 digits per night.

The day before Pi Day (Thursday) she woke up at 4:30 (as she does during Ramadan to eat breakfast before sunrise) and stayed up to memorize digits 900 through 1000 instead of going back to bed, which she usually would.

On the day of the competition, she memorized 17 more after hearing a classmate say that their goal was to reach 1,000.

Nergis, who is enrolled in CB's gifted program, said her long term goal is to become a math teacher.

When she’s not memorizing the digits of Pi, she’s working at Love Bird in Doylestown making chicken sandwiches or she’s playing the violin, practicing karate, or playing games on her phone.