Making the Most of it

Forget about knowing how to sing, dance, act, play sports or even look like Brad Pitt.

Recite a bunch of numbers and their knees will buckle.

Benjamin Most, a sixth-grader at Harbor Day School, did just that.

And now he’s the reigning pi champion, not to mention somewhat of a rock star on the Corona del Mar campus.

Most recited pi out to 2,522 numbers in less than 15 minutes. But he really had the girls at the first 1,000.

Every year, the school holds PiDay, where students gather in the school’s conference room to recite as many numbers as they can remember.

Most, who’s been memorizing the numbers since last summer, took the stage and made the most of it, rambling off the digits so fast that it was hard to follow — even with the numbers printed on a handout.

By the time Most finished, the room of about 50 students erupted in applause. Girls shrieked. Boys bellowed.

Teacher Meggen Stockstill, the school’s math department chairwoman, crowned Most with a shiny plastic crown that looked like it came from Burger King. Then, she asked him a poignant question in front of all the students.

“Rumor has it that you’re going to try and double your numbers each year? Is that true?”

Most looked up at her and, without missing a beat, told the truth.

“No, that’s not true,” he said.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of pi, it’s basically a formula that represents circumference over diameter.

The first 10 digits of pi are the most important, but that hasn’t stopped mathematicians from examining the infinite number.

“It’s never-ending,” Stockstill said. “There’s no pattern. There’s no way to tame it. It’s irrational. We crave patterns in this world, and this number has no pattern.”

When new computers are put to the test before they hit the shelves in stores, one of their first orders is to calculate pi, Stockstill said.

“Interesting enough,” she added, “Albert Einstein’s birthday was on March 14.”

The first digits of pi are 3.14, or the numbers signifying March 14.

No pattern to that thought. That’s just a factoid on the crazy number, which has been drilled into some 400 students at Harbor Day School since the time they walk through the doors.

Students compete to get their hands on that free “homework pass,” a highly coveted piece of paper that absolves them from doing any homework so long as they memorize a bunch of numbers.

It’s a tradition that Stockstill started in 2001.

Most, a quiet kid with braces, said he spent about 20 minutes a night learning new digits to prepare for the competition.

Other students didn’t even approach Most’s number. The second-place student recited pi to 300 places.

After that, it was 100 here and 50 there.

It’s the effort that counts, and they all put in a lot of effort, Stockstill said.

It’s just that Most set the curve.

“He came out of nowhere last year. He was a real sleeper,” said Stockstill, sounding a bit like an athletic scout.

In reciting more than 2,000 numbers, Most beat the school’s champion, Jamie Searles, who set the record in 2009, batting off 2,009 numbers to go with the year.

Then enters Most, who stunned last year’s audience by reciting 1,589 numbers.

Just about everybody was impressed by his memory.

Asked what he thought about pi, Gary Skiwarczynski, who is in charge of the school’s campus security, paused, then said, “It’s got something to do with the meaning of the universe.”

Then, he took the answer back a bit later, saying, “It’s when you divide a number and it keeps ending up even.”

Finally, Skiwarczynski just admitted outright that he just liked the pie, which is served each year during the contest.

“The pie is awesome,” he said.

That’s p-i-e, not pi.

Principal Doug Phelps is proud of his students.

“I don’t know how they do it,” he said. “Last year, Jamie was reciting the numbers so fast two people who had the numbers right there in front of them told her to hold up and wait. They still couldn’t follow her.”