Ever see a Mathemagician?

Sorry guys, this was supposed to go in the Off-Topic.

It's kinda long, but hang in there.

http://www.wimp.com/excitingmath/

I don't know what you're talking about.....it IS in offtopic.

Watched it. I now feel incredibly stupid

It was ~6:00 am, I had two windows open.

I've seen that before, it's just staggering how his mind works.

<<Math Major.

Impressive, and yes he is very bright, but the quick mental math is nothing that special. I bet that 10% of the members on this board could do the same thing if they spent a couple months studying the methods behind it. We watched a video of him (not the same one) at one point sometime in school (I don't know when--I want to say it was middle school) and learned about how he does it. It takes commitment and a fair bit of brainpower, but it is not unreachable for a lot of bright folks. The thing is, it isn't all that useful of a skill when you think about it--how often do you have to multiply random numbers when you aren't near an excel spreadsheet, calculator, cell phone, or barring all that, pencil and paper?

That said, the guy is brilliant. I came across some of his works when I was studying Graph theory. It didn't pertain to what I was doing, but the stuff was very impressive.

While I was still in college, I could solve differential equations in my head, because I did it all the time.

Also, the link doesn't work for me.

Sky_Render wrote: While I was still in college, I could solve differential equations in my head, because I did it all the time. Also, the link doesn't work for me.

Youtube Art Benjamin Mathemagician.

I saw a show on TV about this guy, Daniel Tammet. It showed him reciting Pi correctly for hours and hours. Absolutely amazing.

There really isn’t much that words can say when you start learning one of the hardest languages on Earth (Icelandic) Monday Morning and then proceed to conduct a full fledged interview in that language on Friday night. Daniel is unique in the fact that although he has an amazing savant mind, he is also socially functional. Besides Icelandic he speaks 10 languages, including one that he made up. His real talent, however, is numbers. He holds the European record for reciting pi up to 22,514 digits (it took over 5 hours). Because he is a functional savant he can also introspect on his abilities, having explained that he sees numbers and calculations in his head as landscapes full of shapes and colors. His skills don’t come without drawbacks though. Within 1 hour of parting ways with Daniel, although he would be able to remember the distance between your eyes, how many buttons your shirt had, and everything you said, he wouldn’t recognize your face on the street. Its the details that he remembers.

^^ That stuff really leaves me speechless, but I don't think Dr. Benjamin is a savant.

Pi up to a kabillion digits makes me laugh though. I had a professor who was doing a presentation on the calculation of pi up to a bunch of digits. Somebody asked him if there was a reason for doing it, and he said "Absolutely! To show that I got farther than that Russian guy!" He went on to say that we got to the moon and back using only 5 digits of pi; so while someday we might be doing something that requires that level of precision, he can't yet fathom what that might be.

Gasoline wrote: I saw a show on TV about this guy, Daniel Tammet. It showed him reciting Pi correctly for hours and hours. Absolutely amazing.

There really isn’t much that words can say when you start learning one of the hardest languages on Earth (Icelandic) Monday Morning and then proceed to conduct a full fledged interview in that language on Friday night. Daniel is unique in the fact that although he has an amazing savant mind, he is also socially functional. Besides Icelandic he speaks 10 languages, including one that he made up. His real talent, however, is numbers. He holds the European record for reciting pi up to 22,514 digits (it took over 5 hours). Because he is a functional savant he can also introspect on his abilities, having explained that he sees numbers and calculations in his head as landscapes full of shapes and colors. His skills don’t come without drawbacks though. Within 1 hour of parting ways with Daniel, although he would be able to remember the distance between your eyes, how many buttons your shirt had, and everything you said, he wouldn’t recognize your face on the street. Its the details that he remembers.

Its weird...when I was in early grade school, learning to count and my ABC's, or later learning multiplication and division, I clearly remember the numbers and letters in my head having specific "shapes' (not like an "A" looks like a triangle, different somehow), personalities, colors, and peculiar spatial-relationships with each other. And because (in my mind) they had personalities and shape, size, distance, color, etc, they "interacted" with each other as such, though later I came to recognize that these interactions were me understanding the rules for how they multiplied or divided etc long before I really learned long division or multiplication...

I was diagnosed as ADHD in 3rd grade or so, and my parents were told that it impeded my learning and inhibited my aptitude. I had was put into some special classes and was sent to a psychologist regularly as part of my "therapy" (along with several meds).

I hadnt mentioned the odd world that numbers and letters lived in inside my head, not because I was ashamed, I just didnt know any better...I thought everyone saw them that way. Then one day, the doctor mustve caught onto some aspect of this because he started to ask me all about the way I saw things like numbers and letters and such. Turned out that I guess I evaluated math and such in a similar manner to Mr. Tammet, because I went from special needs classes to a form of advanced classes.

I suppose I must not be nearly on the same plane as that guy, but I have always been able to perform pretty well in all my math classes, including college calculus and trig etc, without that much effort. Im not a big fan of math, I find it dull, but thats probably because I also find it quite logical, and predictable. I never really had to study to pass my classes...I just kinda picked it up from the lectures, and was able to pretty easily get B's and C's, even though I almost never did homework.

Now that I know about this Tammet guy, Im gonna look into what is written about him...I find that stuff waaay more fascinating than the math hes so impossibly good at

In reply to 4cylndrfury:

Sounds like you've got a form of Synesthesia:

Synesthesia

That puts you in the same class with Duke Ellington, Franz Liszt, Billy Joel, Itzhak Perlman, and Nikola Tesla, to name a few.

It's a really fascinating condition. Very rare.

I joke to my coworkers about spending my weekends at competitive Pi reciting events.

Oh, pshaw. I speak a language I made up, too. No big deal.

I'm calling "Prove it!" on the idea that we went to the moon using 5 digits of Pi. It's an excellent story, if true; any ideas on possible sources to find out for sure?

Stealthtercel wrote: I'm calling "Prove it!" on the idea that we went to the moon using 5 digits of Pi. It's an excellent story, if true; any ideas on possible sources to find out for sure?

[edit: the best link I have found is this one: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/07/apollo-11-missions-40th-anniversary-one.html ]

contact the people responsible for these articles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Apollo-11-The-computers-that-put-man-on-the-moon
http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2009/07/20/how-powerful-was-the-apollo-11-computer/

Grant Robertson said: Internally, the 8086 had 8 16-bit registers available to work with -- for those not familiar with the internals of a processor, a register is much like the numbers you'd keep in your head while doing math, and "memory" is more like scratch paper where you write things down for later use. The 8086 could keep track of 8 of those, the Apollo Guidance Computer held just 4. (The AGC also had a host of other non-general purpose registers, ranging from 1 to 16 bits in width, but it's difficult to compare those with the architecture of the 8086)

http://gizmodo.com/5932207/the-computer-for-the-apollo-program-used-rope-memory-woven-by-little-old-ladies

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/14/math-geeks-celebrate-pi-day/1987255/

• Around the Earth. If the circumference of the Earth were calculated using pi rounded to only the ninth decimal place, an error of no more than one quarter of an inch in 25,000 miles would result.

Stealthtercel wrote: I'm calling "Prove it!" on the idea that we went to the moon using 5 digits of Pi. It's an excellent story, if true; any ideas on possible sources to find out for sure?

What Joey said, thanks Joey for doing my work for me!

Maybe he said that we can get to the moon and back with just 5. Either way, my point still stands.

SVreX wrote: In reply to 4cylndrfury: Sounds like you've got a form of Synesthesia: Synesthesia That puts you in the same class with Duke Ellington, Franz Liszt, Billy Joel, Itzhak Perlman, and Nikola Tesla, to name a few. It's a really fascinating condition. Very rare.

wow...thanks for the link!

EDIT:

sweet jebus Im a freak?!?

much of whats in that link is an incredibly accurate description of what grade school was like...I wonder if what I have experienced could be helpful to researchers.

In reply to 4cylndrfury:

Don't feel bad. I dated a girl for a while who could "see" music.....there were things that would annoy her in music that I would not notice....she would describe it as the "colors clashing."

I hung out with a guy that could "pick up" your thoughts. Funny feeling having someone recite verbatum what's going on in your head while it's happening.

914Driver wrote: I hung out with a guy that could "pick up" your thoughts. Funny feeling having someone recite verbatum what's going on in your head while it's happening.

me too. like when we were at the strip club, he would say "dude, you're totally thinking about titties right now!" motherberkeleyer was right every time!

Jerk.

Joey, thanks very much for those links! I will dive into them! mtn, thanks for raising the intial point. We write math books in this house, and this is the stuff that makes math exciting for kids. Well, and adults, of course.

4cylndrfury wrote: wow...thanks for the link! sweet jebus Im a freak?!?

Let's just say you are special.

4cylndrfury wrote: I wonder if what I have experienced could be helpful to researchers.

I'm sure they are always willing to probe around a bit.