Hidden in π is a hobby project. I built it so anyone can find their phone number, birthday or name in the first 100 billion digits of π, in a blink and for free.
Who runs it, and why
One person runs this site in their spare time. It started with an episode of The Rest Is Science, “Earth Is A Cradle But Not A Grave”, where Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens wondered whether their phone numbers are hidden in π. The whole story is in a thank-you note.
Hidden in π is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by The Rest Is Science, its hosts or Goalhanger.
How it works, in brief
Reading 100 billion digits for every search would take far too long, so the site did the reading once, in advance: it wrote down where every number up to ten digits first appears. A search is one look in that table. How it works shows the trick in chalk, and the π notes go deeper.
Where the digits come from
The digits are Google Cloud’s record computation of π: π digits computed by Google Cloud (100 trillion digits, 2022). The table was built from the first 100 billion of them and checked against those digits before the site used it.
What we never store
We never store what you search, and we never store where in π it was found. Searches travel in the body of a request, never in the web address, and they are never logged, sent to analytics or ads, or shown to anyone else.
There are no accounts. The privacy policy has the details and the terms the rules.
Famous names and getting in touch
The famous names shown next to your result are public names placed by their keypad digits, never anyone’s phone number. If you would like a name taken off, or just want to say hello, see contact.