In a society with nearly ubiquitous access to the internet how valuable is it to memorize raw facts? There are a few anecdotes about Einstein not knowing his phone number and not knowing the number of feet in a mile. His answer was along the lines of questioning why one should memorize something that can easily be looked up.
Personally, I find understanding concepts and composing ideas to be far more valuable. However, I'd be interested in finding out if the memorization of facts somehow exercised/increased the brain's ability to perform more (arguably) meaningful tasks.
1) Its a cool party trick - if you can give someone the 82nd digit of Pi in 8 seconds, they'll probably be impressed because you can't really do that using a conventional method of counting in your head through to that digit of Pi in such a short time.
2) Brain excercise - things like this will probably help keep your brain healthy.
> Personally, I find understanding concepts and composing ideas to be far more valuable.
Me too, they're not mutually exclusive! I very much take the same view about memorizing facts and have a generally poor memory. That's partly why this is cool, I still knew the first 25 digits of Pi effortlessly 2 years after doing this.
I know of at least one place gives out free pie on Pi day if you can recite 100 digits of pi. (For each digit of pi you have memorized you get 1% off)
Say a slice of pie is $3. Pi day comes around once a year. Assume you'll live for 60 more years, getting your free slice of pi every year, and the average inflation adjusted interest rate will be roughly 3%. Then the present value of memorizing the digits of pi will be $83.03.
How long will it take you to memorize? How much are you getting paid hourly now?
Personally, I find understanding concepts and composing ideas to be far more valuable. However, I'd be interested in finding out if the memorization of facts somehow exercised/increased the brain's ability to perform more (arguably) meaningful tasks.