To celebrate National PI day Aldenham music teacher Mr James Harrison managed an incredible feat of reciting the first 2,500 decimal places of PI, all from memory. He kept his nerve in front of students and colleagues  to complete the challenge that he had set himself and push his ranking from 103 to 73 in the Pi world ranking list.

Mr Harrison was recorded live on Facebook with students and colleagues keeping a close eye on the correct sequence of digits on their papers to make sure that he did not slip up at any point . This can be viewed here.

Each year on 14 March (3.14) Pi Day is celebrated around the world. Pi is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant – the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. There are infinite digits. 

Speaking about how the challenge came about, Mr Harrison said: "I first started learning Pi in around 2010 when a friend challenged me to learn the first 50 places. I found this quite easy and just carried on. I don't have any set techniques. There seems to be an emotional connection with the numbers - while I'm recalling Pi, there's definitely a faint connection to the place I was when I first looked at them."