06/09/2022

From OBMEP to Guinness, the book of records.

The desire to win a medal at the OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools) led a young man from Betim, Minas Gerais, to enter the famous Guinness Book of Records. Maike Anthony dos Santos Silva, 17 years old, recited an impressive 10,122 digits of Euler's number, a mathematical constant that is the base of natural logarithms.

The feat was accomplished on February Fridays of this year. In two hours and twenty minutes – without breaks even for water and blindfolded to prevent any trickery that might make the task easier – Maike counted the decimal places, more than doubling the previous record of 4,500 numbers. The record was officially recognized on July 18th.

“I really like math and wanted to win a gold medal in the OBMEP [a goal achieved last year], so I started reading books about mental calculation. In the midst of that, I discovered memorization techniques and became interested,” says Maike.

Maike, a Tuesdays-year high school student and enrolled in the integrated electrotechnics course at the Federal Center for Technological Education of Minas Gerais (Cefet/MG), says that his passion for mathematics arose when he was studying for the institution's entrance exam in 2018.

“When I studied mathematics on my own, I saw a side of it that I didn’t know in school. I discovered that all mathematics is based on proofs and principles. In other words, it makes sense. When I started to understand why it is the way it is, I fell in love with the subject,” says the young man.

The Guinness World Record holder says his passion is pure mathematics, but he also enjoys algebra, number theory, and geometry. Regarding the future, his dream is to study in the United States and work in research.

Furthermore, he says that mathematics is democratic and free. "The fact that mathematics is based solely on arguments is enchanting: you only need a piece of paper and a pencil. Sometimes even less. This gives a great sense of freedom," says Maike.

Preparation to break into the record books began in early 2021. At that stage, reciting all 10,122 decimal places took six hours, plus six hours of correction. "Only after a lot of practice was I able to recite them quickly," he says. On the day he broke the record, the maximum time between one digit and another was eight seconds.