Geneva 5th grader memorizes 1,011 digits of Pi

GENEVA, Ill. (WLS) -- If you can barely remember your own phone number, just listen to what a west suburban fifth grader did.

March 14 is Pi Day, which most of us probably only remember from our math classes as 3.14. Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, and regardless of the size of the circle, pi is always the same number. Pi is also an infinite number.

Reciting pi is a skill few adult mathematicians have, let alone a fifth grader. Wyatt Gross, a student at Mill Creek Elementary in Geneva, memorized 1, 011 digits of pi. He recited the whole thing at school on Tuesday, breaking a school record. The old record was 550 digits, which Wyatt almost doubled.

And, if you can believe it, he's only been learning the numbers for two weeks.

"I memorized it like phone numbers, so three, three, then four," Wyatt said in an interview over Skype.

"Some parts of it's easy, and some parts of it is kinda hard to remember," he said.

His mother may have been more nervous than he was.

"I had butterflies before he started, because I knew how many he could get to and I wanted him to get to that," said Jessica Gross.

Wyatt's teacher, Kelly Pender, said she had no idea he would take it this far.

"He just blew everybody away today, so it was awesome," she said.

Though he has an amazing memory and facility with numbers, Wyatt said he wants to be a swimmer when he grows up.