Girl Memorizes Pi to 420 Digits

DES MOINES, IA -- Most of us haven't thought about pi since high school geometry, when we learned, and then promptly forgot pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Besides its uses in geometry pi has also become competitive.

Until someone knocks her off, Lindsey Echelberger, a freshman at Prairie Valley High School in Gowrie, Iowa, is the unofficial queen of memorizing pi.

Pi is an infinite decimal starting 3.14; then the numbers right of the decimal place just go on and on with no end.

Math teacher Sharon Jaaeschke recently held a pi memorizing contest and was following along at the dry erase board as Lindsey recited 420 digits.

Lindsey says she used a method of dividing the rows into small groups of two digit numbers.

While memorizing 420 digits is impressive, it's not even close to the world champion.

Chao Lu of China rattled off over 67-thousand digits in 2005.

If you look down the list Lindsey's 420 places her 66th in the world.

It's no surprise that Lindsey is a good student, but this might surprise you.

She doesn't want to go into math or science.

She says she's always wanted to be a veterinarian.