Piem - Examples in English - Poems

Poems

Some mnemonics, such as this poem which gives the three and the first 20 decimal digits, use the separation of the poem's title and main body to represent the decimal point:

Pie

I wish I could determine pi

Eureka, cried the great inventor

Christmas pudding, Christmas pie

Is the problem's very center.

Another, more poetic version is:

Sir, I have a rhyme excelling,

In mystic power and magic spelling,

Celestial spirits elucidate,

For my own problems can't relate.

Extensions to 30 or 31 decimals of the same proceed as follows:

There are minor variations on the above rhyme, which still allow pi to be worked out correctly. However, one variation replaces the word "lexicon's" with "lesson's" and in doing so, incorrectly indicates that the 18th digit is seven.

The logologist Dmitri Borgmann gives the following 30-word poem in his book, Language on vacation: An olio of orthographical oddities:

Now, a moon, a lover refulgent in flight,

Sails the black silence's loneliest ellipse.

Computers use pi, the constant, when polite,

Or gentle data for sad tracking aid at eclipse.

The following sonnet is a mnemonic for pi to 75 decimal places in iambic pentameter:

Now I defy a tenet gallantly

Of circle canon law: these integers

Importing circles' quotients are, we see,

Unwieldy long series of cockle burs

Put all together, get no clarity;

Mnemonics shan't describeth so reformed

Creating, with a grammercy plainly,

A sonnet liberated yet conformed.

Strangely, the queer'st rules I manipulate

Being followéd, do facilitate

Whimsical musings from geometric bard.

This poesy, unabashed as it's distressed,

Evolvéd coherent - a simple test,

Discov'ring poetry no numerals jarred.

Note that in this example, 10-letter words are used to represent the digit zero.

Other poems use sound as a mnemonic technique, as in the following poem which rhymes with the first 140 decimal places of pi using a blend of assonance, slant rhyme, and perfect rhyme:

dreams number us like pi. runes shift. nights rewind

daytime pleasure-piles. dream-looms create our id.

moods shift. words deviate. needs brew. pleasures rise.

time slows. too late? wait! foreign minds live in

us! quick-minds, free-minds, minds-we-never-mind,

unknown, gyrate! neuro-rhymes measure our

minds, for our minds rhyme. crude ego-emanations

distort nodes. id, (whose basic neuro-spacetime rhymes),

plays its tune. space drones before fate unites

dreams’ lore to unsung measures. whole dimensions

gyrate. new number-games donate quick minds &

weave through fate’s loom. fears, hopes, digits, or devils

collide here—labor stored in gold-mines, lives, lightcone-

piles. fate loops through dreams & pleasure-looms….

Note that "dreams number us like pi" corresponds to "314159," and so on. Sound-based mnemonic techniques, unlike pilish, do not require that the letters in each word be counted in order to recall the digits of pi. However, where sound-based mnemonics use assonance, extra care must be taken to distinguish "nine" and "five," which contain the same vowel sound. In this example, the author assumes the convention that zero is often called "O."