Burnsville 8th grader rattles off 501 digits of pi from memory

A Burnsville eighth grader ran away with his school’s annual Pi Day contest Friday after he recited 501 digits of pi from memory.

Kiefer Lundsten won last year’s competition at Aspen Middle School in Savage with 406, but this year he pushed his limit even higher, his dad told KSTP.

Pi is an irrational number, meaning it cannot be expressed as a fraction and its decimals never repeat. It rounds to 3.14, which is why Pi Day is celebrated on March 14.

The Guinness World Record for memorized places of pi is 70,000. Rajveer Meena of India set the record over the course of nearly 10 hours in 2015.

Kiefer set his mark in just over three and a half minutes.