One 10-year-old at St. James Intermediate School is breaking the stereotype that boys are better at math than girls.
Pi Day is March 14, and fifth graders Taylor Hansen and McKenzie Bessinger make memorizing the digits in Pi look easy.
“I would read 10 digits and then memorize them and I do a little quiz on them, and then I do more and keep going on and on,” said Bessinger.
Bessinger is the frontrunner for a Pi Day contest teacher Ron Satterley put together.
She’s able to ratte off 252 digits as of Friday, Mar. 8, and Satterley says that’s above the 224 digits that a Harvard student got to in their annual Pi Day contest and celebration at Harvard University.
“It just goes to show, when you put your mind to something, even if it’s just memorizing a bunch of numbers, what the human brain can do, but she’s a hard worker and it doesn’t surprise me, it’s just amazing to see,” said Satterley.
Satterley says Bessinger has such an appreciation for math and is such a genius that she lies awake at night seeing numbers when she closes her eyes.
“I feel good, beating a college Harvard student, because one, they’re older than me, they’re in a higher grade, and I feel like I’m doing great,” said Bessinger.
Satterley says Bessinger started practicing just two days ago, and says she’s just showing that girls can do anything they put their minds to, with a little hard work.
“I wanna go to like, a really good college, and get like a really good job, like maybe something with like technology, since I was just in a tech fair, which I won,” said another one of Mr. Satterley’s students, Taylor Hansen, who’s in the running for the Pi Day contest right behind Bessinger.
Hansen can recite near 120 digits of the mathematical constant.
Satterley will announce the winner of his classroom Pi Day memorization contest, and he says if Bessinger wins, she doesn’t know what she’s getting.
“We got a couple surprises up our sleeve,” he said. “Yeah, she doesn’t, I’m not divulging all of the prizes yet, but she’ll win something big.”
