[sown]

Others here are skeptical that just anyone can memorize pi to an arbitrary length. One way you can test if this has to do with you being 14 when this happened, is to memorize phi or e to 100, 200 or so digits with no mnemonic device. Or, maybe a string of random words or the contents of an entire magazine, each 100s of items long. It all depends on you being honest, but I'm curious. Maybe your brain has changed since then or you learned how to do this, but at a certain age when the brain was more malleable, hence the window of training was very narrow and adults like myself can't do this, either.

If you can memorize this without a mnemonic device, then I hate to break it to you, you are a mutant with Eidetic memory. And, so incidentally was your friend.

If you can't, then perhaps you've found a special, easy way to make memorizing numbers easy. Perhaps you should start a website and sell this technique?

[nerfhammer]

People who have preternaturally good memories invariably turn out to have intuitively rediscovered classic mnemonic techniques at a young age and have used them semi-consciously without realizing it most of their lives.

[tghw]

I'm not sure it's possible to not use a mnemonic device. Our brains record information by association, which, by definition, is a mnemonic device.

I highly recommend reading Moonwalking with Einstein. It's about a journalist who got interested in memory competitions and, with a lot of practice, ended up winning the US memory championship. Anyone can do it.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Moonwalking-Einstein-Science-Rememberi...