Sunday, November 8, 2009
Arthur Benjamin does "Mathemagic"
"TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize."
http://www.ted.com/
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3 comments:
He says he is not a savant, but there is something different with the way his brain works than the average person.
I've read about people who translate numbers into words or colors into smells.... different neurological connections are happening inside their heads.
He is correct, I won't be stealing his tricks. I can figure out the percentage of money I'll save at a good sale. That does it for me!
I'd not heard of using mnemonic devices before in mental mathematical calculations, It makes sense, though. It's near impossible to keep track of all those numbers and sums in your mind, but if you can substitute something (a word, a symbol) for specific large values, you can keep the number groups "manageable."
I think.
I believe this is the guy I heard about a year and a half ago on the IT Conversations podcast feed. Pretty impressive. I am pretty good at Fermi problems, but can't get the precision he does.
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