Meet the two-time world champion in memory

​What do a cake, a ghost and a helmet have in common? Well, they represent the first nine decimals of pi. At least, that’s according to Jonas von Essen, student at Chalmers University of Technology and two-time world champion in memory.

Six years ago, Jonas von Essen had no idea that he would become a two-time world champion in memory. He even says that he had quite a bad memory. Thanks to a book on memory techniques he found at the library, Jonas started to get interested in the subject and only three months later, he won the Swedish championship in memory. One year after that he became world champion.

[kelceyfirth]

I'm 15 years old and from England, I've been looking into the memory palace technique to help me in revising for my GCSE exams. I always assumed it wouldnt work for me because i dont have a visual memory, i just have inner thoughts and pitch black, I guess. However, after trying some basic words to loci, and it surprisingly worked and i still remember them 2 weeks later! I hope to use this technique to learn quotes for english, required practical methods for science and concepts for computing. I've started on English by linking the quotes to parts of my English classroom!

[rorygiambalvo]

He recently made the attempt but messed up a little past the 20, 000 mark. I hope he tries again, soon!

[dadasajad]

and there's me who always forgets first line of the topic during an exam.

[danielthehuman]

I'd like him to draw (or have someone draw) pie in these three digit images! I'd like to see everything he sees while reciting it.

[spunkyable]

When I was a kid, there was this guy on Guinness world record who remembered 50 items in a row amd got the record, I still don't get how it was even slightly impressive compared to other memory feats ive seen

[IntuneVitaDoctrina]

Jonas is the King!!! He has also written a book in this (in Swedish so far what I know)

[lindhe]

Haha, what?? I have totally missed this guy. Cool.

[aadarsh]

Amazing skills he acquired with dedication and practice 😊💐👌👌
Keep it up buddy...🙂👍👍

[koopert]

I pictured 0-9 as initials of Mario characters and i imagined the first 101 digits as a football game.

[jaminson]

i just use 5 digits at a time cos they have a melody like " pa pa papapa". then its more like a song, im up to 406 digits of pi and it probably took about 2 hours to memorize all up

[kietherhamilton]

I memorise numbers as bus routes and songs with a catalogue number like MCS984 is Feed Me- Coffee Black, I can just memorise from that instead of converting from a story

[GustavoSilva-nyjc]

I wonder how many times he must have answered the question "how do you do it?"

[CoolcookieAud]

I always see the people who do those memorization things do hand movements??

[extraterrestrial]

I wonder how long does one of this world Pi Championship session last, and whether the last years' championship ends before the new years' championship starts?

[Bbeeetruthful]

Me : making story and when time to memorize i add more characters and situation because i forgot what was the old one and these patterns continue again and again

[vivekc]

hey even i learned till 150 digits by making a song on it!

[jarenmontaos]

This man is probably a cheat code on school exams🤣

[garetcrossman]

But how is Yonis also able to remember all those wavy arm movements?

[squirtchimsley]

I mean, I feel like all you had to say is "he got a brush of that tism", and that would have explained enough about how he can do this.

[IAN-xeye]

I struggle to remember my phone number