TIL Shakuntala Devi, an Indian mental calculator,was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit number; she answered in 50 seconds. Her answer was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.
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Comments (3115)

She was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit number

So they asked her to figure out, in her head, what number multiplied by itself 23 times gives you:

916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771

As an experiment, start a timer and see how long it takes you to say this number aloud, let alone find the 23rd frigging root of it!!

It's so incomprehensible to me that someone could process it so fast!

I recently have been watching "Stan Lee's Superhumans" and they had a guy on who could do square roots, multiplications, and division in his head faster than people could type it into a calculator. While they didn't have him do anything to this level of complexity, they did have him do a few that resulted in high digits.

They looked into what gave him the ability to do it, and they found using an fMRI that the "math center" of his brain had mapped itself to the motor cortex, which allowed him to perform relatively complex mathematics at a subconscious level. Maybe this woman has something similar?

Link to the guy in question's wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Flansburg

Oh, so he offloaded it to the GPU. Clever.

10/10 analogy, geek approved

By my calculation it's a 1 analogy.

10/10 would marry.

Could we do this to humans through science?

Probably not, at least not intentionally. Maybe in the future we might be able to encourage unusual cortical developments, but the way things stand right now the brain's wiring schema is far beyond complex, and the tools just don't exist.

Potentially if we can ever hijack neuron development we may be able to repair brain damage and generate our own specialized circuits. But neuroscience is pretty far off from there right now

If we lined up 100,000 people, kick them all in the head, maybe a savant will emerge.

Let's get a TRUE kickstarter going, Reddit!

Haha maybe not ethical, but I'll read your results.

Science at its finest.

Not only that, there are laws that discourage the kind of testing that would allow this to happen.

Should there be, though ? Why should we not be permitted to test the limits of our development ? There are possibly ethical arguments against brain-neuron augmentation, but I believe we can disregard them when potential gains are so high.

Perhaps we can, after a few decades of such testing, develop the equivalents of mentats in the Dune universe, who were essentially human computers. Utilize our brain's innate ability for parallel processing to the max.

Here is a part of the problem: Previously there HAS been human testing. Not for that but for human testing in general. It is widely considered unethical and there is a LOT of red tape to cut through in order to do any type of testing (medical animal testing first, for example), that is one of the reasons it takes years to produce a new medicine.

I should say that I am an armchair spectator. I don't know nearly enough to give a well formed response. Although if you do find this interesting, please look up bioethics.

Oooh, thank you for that link. This is a very interesting path to go down.

Anddddd down the rabbit hole we go!

It's an important question; however, I don't think we currently possess the technology to reach that level yet.

Yeah, I agree, we probably can't influence cortical development quite yet. We'll certainly be able to, soon. Much like the development of atomic weapons, human cerebral modification can be a game-changer.

The only problem is that the brain evolved over hundreds of millions of years to do very specific things in the most efficient way possible. It pretty much already runs at max capacity, so there isn't a whole lot that we could change to the pre-existing system. But, the idea of biochips is something that's already being worked on at the level of replacing modern implants, and brain-computer interface is another field that's just emerging in neuroscience (sloppily, but coming). All things considered, I think it's more likely that we'll continue using computers, but, who really knows?

Few things I want to mention is that the brain evolved over hundreds of millions of years to do everything as efficient as possible overall. The brain didn't specialize into mathematics per se. While it probably is running near max capacity overall, I wouldn't say it's running at max capacity in every area given that even this guy has technically advanced past "capacity" in arithmetic. So in the future it could be possible that we could specialize a brain for a more specific task, but it would be even more in the future before we could do that without losing efficiency in other areas. My best guess would be that we would probably try to recreate computers using a pattern/construction more similar to the brain than what we have now and then specialize that.

I agree in that with proper knowledge, we should be allowed to volunteer ourselves for experimental, invasive surgery.

If you mean human testing, then yes, but to be fair human testing is wildly restricted for essentially everything. However neuronal regeneration is one of the hot topics of neuroscience and medical research, and has been actively worked on for decades. Being able to regenerate cortical damage would revolutionize medical treatment for just about everything nerve damage to Alzheimer's or dementia. It's certainly not being blocked by legislation, we just don't have anything to test beyond animal models.

If we can prove that rigorous practice results in this result (very much the mathematical analogy to performing something until it is muscle memory) then telling people to simply practice mental calculations would be creating this change "using science".

It's incredible, really. We can develop all manner of invasive methods of forced weight loss to compensate for what is, relatively, a simple change in habits to produce the same results.

The question isn't "can we do this with science?". The question is, rather, can we do this surgically. Or, "can somebody make this change for me?". What would it matter if someone else could forcefully induce the change? It's not like one would utilize it anyways.

Well. I mean yes, neuroplasticity is the driving force behind practice improvement both cognitively and physically (muscle memory is a modification of the local nervous tissue). But there are quite a few limits on the change possible. Especially for those who have damaged tissue, or are just significantly deficient being able to add computational ability to the brain would be incredible medically.

That being said there is no habit in existence no matter how profoundly good for you that will allow you to regenerate your spinal cord. Likewise a damaged visual cortex may prevent you from ever recognizing the faces of your friends, distance or identity of objects, or completely destroy your ability to process the signals carried from the retina. And beyond fixing things, can you imagine the impact of being able to retune the brain? Psychopath to empath, major depression to motivated individual, for a lot of people struggling with mental disorders their biggest problem is themselves and habit based modification can only change so much.

Sorry for the rant, but people tend to discredit the petty outcomes of scientific advancements, while missing the broad implications that they would have throughout science.

And even if we understood it, there would still be many incredibly large technical hurdles between there and actually changing anything in a real, developed brain.

And that's what we're working on :)

[deleted]

Yeah! There are already some really brilliant scientists working on genetic modification, with very real successes. It's outside of my field, but we spend a lot of time working with genetics and at the current progression of things it may not be too long before we're administering gene treatments to cure hereditary disorders before they're inherited. This describes a treatment that lacks a lot of finesse, but allows the child's mitochondria to be inserted. Currently it's pretty controversial, but considering the fact that mitochondria do respond to the lifestyle of an individual I don't think that it would be all that far out for professional distance runners to sell their mitochondria. +1 to stamina and all that. Followed by more in depth modification as GMO's stop being held up like bogeymen.

i dream of this sort of thing

assuming there's no major downsides to such a link, imagine the possibilities!... or at least the novelties...

Probably not

You don't fucking know.

It's sort of my thing, and one of the major topics in any developmental neuroscience course.

One day it could be a standard procedure.

Oh totally! Current neuromodulation is disturbingly basic, but the hope is that someday we will have to tools to modify brain circuits with the same level of accuracy that they form. There's just a yawning chasm of research that needs to be filled before then.

cry havok, and let slip the nerds of war

Man, the futures gonna be awesome.

Would that ever be allowed by the fda? I wonder how anyone would it is safe to try on humans after demonstrating it on mice.

You wandered in here a bit late haha. And yeah, it'll start with either implants or figuring out how to repair brain damage, but it wouldn't just be mice. Eventually it would be escalated through more complex models until the treatment was shown effective in non-human primates. Once it hits that point there should be a large enough body of work to begin an experimental stage 1 medical trial to evaluate the effectiveness in humans.

Anything that goes into the human body from a medical standpoint is very tightly regulated, which is good.

Yes, sorry I was browsing the top of the month for TIL and came into the convo very late.

I remember in a drug discovery and development class I took in undergrad the professor explained all the steps in an NDE pipeline. I guess I was just wondering how the hell anyone would prove (to the fda) this method works on mice before moving on to the next stage. With an efficacy study it seems to be more objective ; you would measure the size of an organ, the concentration of something, etc and show that a specific therapy works. But with something like this it's not as cut and dry because the end result is cognitive function. I guess behavior could be observed like it is for anti-depreseents, but it is just so novel because I can't think of one drug out there that is used to improve cognitive function.

Not a problem, just surprised me haha.

Now that I'm on a computer I can flesh it out a bit better, but you're right about treatment development being a bit different for some things in neuroscience. The underlying thing isn't really adding cognitive function, but replacing damaged function which is demonstrable. Lesion something obvious, like something in the auditory or visual pathway, and then if you can return function via implant or neuronal regrowth that's the first step in showing viability. Honestly, that alone would be earth shattering just for medical treatment, but fast forward a few years and it gives us an opportunity to add function rather than just rehabilitate. Which is fascinatingly enough a project that DARPA is going to try and implement by adding an "internal display" to vision.

There's a couple of drugs that seem to show cognitive improvements in certain disorders (neurotropics), but there's precious little evidence that they benefit healthy people at all. On the other hand, tCDS (transcranial direct stimulation) on the frontal lobes has a couple of studies now showing significant improvement in learning, which is promising.

HAS SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR?

Slide rulers hate him!

Nah. It's too near.

I say we haven't gone too far enough!

precision blunt force trauma?

Yeah man haven't you seen the documentary Limitless?

Well, it could backfire.

My motor skills are completely done by entirely different parts of my brain, and my motor functions SUCK.

Cave Johnson here...

Perhaps the Bene Gesserit could pull it off in many many generations

That's a Dune (frank Herbert) sci fi route. I don't see any other way though

Edit: which is speculative fiction. (Take what we know, what we are as peoples... Then extrapolate what 'could' happen if certain paths were followed).

Speculative science fiction is NOT fantasy. When done right, it is using what we know of ourselves as people, animals, masses/mobs following a logical (reasonably extrapolated from actual history and cultural anthropology) way that has naturally been attempted, if not succeeded in.

I would recommend the first Dune novel to illustrate this.

I would doubly recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The first at least.

Then there is the Ender's Game series which starts super speculative, then leads naturally into a study on cultural anthropology, then into socio-politics on a global scale.

Cheers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-current_stimulation

No, there are no good drivers for the Asian models.

Brain CUDA

Too bad my brain has AMD and runs on linux...

At least youre FOSS

The firmware is proprietary though and the ACPI implementation he's running is a joke. He has to spend like 25% of uptime in S3 sleep otherwise he starts oopsing in a day or two.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning

Richard Stallman? Is that you?!

You could just use OpenCL instead of being upset that you can't use a closed source proprietary API.

No OpenCL for legacied AMDs, though (IIRC).

I also have trouble getting refill ribbons for my 9-pin dot matrix... is this really a problem? ;)

I'm still running on Windows 69

Unfortunately it seems that Microsoft will skip NT 6.9. Windows 8 is Windows NT 6.3, Win10 will apparently be NT 10.

Can you SLI it?

That was a Star Trek level analogy for an overly complicated explanation! UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUpvote

More like using one of those PhysX cards.

PhysX is run on the GPU

I know - they used to have dedicated cards though.

She looks kinda old, probably has a SNES FX chip..

Anyone remember x87 FPUs?

Bet he has a 980.

Math Co-Processor!

Source: my 486SX had this

Bohemia, take note of this!

This guy is triple sli-ing 980s and here I am with Intel HD graphics.

multi threads genetic modified brains would be something incredible to aim for 22nd century.

the "math center" of his brain had mapped itself to the motor cortex

Let's hear it for motor cortex. I slipped on the stairs the other day, my hand flew out and caught the edge of the stair before I knew what was happening. My brain figured what muscles to hit when, to hit a target while moving.

It is really fascinating! The other day I was tossing my keys around while standing up and I mistakenly tossed them at an arc over my back. My brain was on it though, because even though I was telling myself that they were lost, my hand reached behind my back, completely out of sight, and caught the keys with seemingly no effort at all. It was then that I took a moment to reflect on how fascinating the human body was and how we should appreciate the several tens of thousands years of evolution that forged us.

how precisely it can calculate the exact arc it took with the weight and force used instantaneously

even knowing all the variables, to calculate it manually isn't anywhere near so simple.

Exactly! These extraordinary things happen on a subconscious level but are only taken for granted. Truly fascinating though.

I have recently seen an increase in my reflex. When I drop something and reach out to grab it, it's almost as if my brain does it before I consciously even apprehend that I dropped something.

...Or maybe the initial panic of dropping something just clouds my view.

That's interesting.

Pretty sure you cannot, I think its something he was born with.

Maybe it's Meybelline

She's gonna stop buses.

Nope! It's developmental!

Why can't I just learn math again with a different part of my brain? I'll just drink like a stem cell shake for breakfast

Well, if you're open to the possibility of brain damage...

2 math centers has got to be better than one math center. I see nothing going wrong.

The stem cells might put a dick in their brain instead of a maths centre. Or something. I am not a biologist. Mercifully.

...i'll be your biology subject anytime

blunt force trauma has been known to give new links within the brain

i mean, sure, you'll certainly have some brain damage, but you might be able to see numbers and stuff.

Apparently the show presented his ability as something innate he was just born with, but you can definitely learn to use the visual and motor processing parts of your brain for mathematics. A lot of mental calculators do this by learning how to use an abacus. They then create a mental model of an abacus in order to do calculation in their mind more effectively. Getting good at that eventually allows people to do shit like this.

Pretty sure you, your colleagues, and the rest of the world would've heard about it by on wow.

Hook him up to the Matrix so he can mine bitcoins for Mr. Smith.

So, was there any detriment to his motor skills?

Apparently not? If there was they didn't mention it in the show.

I can't wait until we're able to figure out how to map all of our math centers to our motor cortexes.

I cannot believe that isn't how we developed since it makes doing math easier by seemingly an almost unimaginable amount. I wonder how powerful computers might be if we could all do math at this level...

We didn't need complex math much for the last several million years. It was kind of on the backburner.

There's a British guy who can do this as well as learn languages in a few days. He has a form of synesthesia where he experiences numbers as visual hallucinations. He can then navigate this visual experience and do complicated math without having to memorize log tables or do some of the other things that human calculators have to do.

May wanna check on that, I've read several articles where a lot of people that claim that have been proven frauds. Not to say it doesn't exist.

Here's the guy. Apparently he's been tested by a bunch of neuroscientists to see if he was just memorizing shit they were pretty sure he had synesthesia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet

There's a whole section in the wiki article about the test that were done on him. Most indicate that he most likely has synesthesia.

I wonder if that means he has an unusual connection between movements and doing math. Like moving or imagining to move a certain way is part of his process of coming up with a solution

i wonder if such a mapping involves any drawbacks

I wonder to what level of connectivity can you give different areas of the brain, before it manifests some form of disability?

multiplications, and division in his head faster than people could type it into a calculator

I can do this ^(with single digit numbers)

Edit: who the fuck taught Reddit order of operations?

This made me think of this episode of Radiolab I just listened to.

It's about a guy who can 'play' several pieces of music in his head simultaneously and keep track of each one.

They tested him with three different pieces of music with different key signatures, tempos, and starting at different times.

They told him to start playing each song in his head, and at the same time started playing a recording of the song (that he couldn't hear).

At some point in the middle of all 3 songs playing they told him to stop and he was able to sing exactly where he was in each song and he was in sync with each of the recordings that had been playing.

Not sure if I explained that in a confusing way; hopefully it makes sense.

I wonder if there's any downsides to that, like he can't move or he's less coordinated while he's calculating something.

So is this like an evolutionary trait/mutation?

When I was in school I had terrible eyesight and a very good affinity for math, coupled with a school that liked to use a program called '10 quick questions'. Since I was in top set, we usually had the setting for whatever we were learning maxed out and the time allowed for each question being 6 to 8 seconds. Bear in mind this same program was used throughout the school, from ages 11 to 18, and if the questions were ever too difficult for the majority of the class the time would be increased to a maximum 10 seconds. The scores out of 10 would then be collected, but I don't think they were used for anything other than to see if mental arithmetic improved.

Anyway while everyone tried to use their precious seconds to write stuff on paper, it took me a few seconds to read the thing. Me being competitive I adapted, started trying to visualise these problems in my head and started noticing patterns very quickly, patterns that are difficult to explain.

My point is I ended up massively increasing my test scores not only in the program, but in the actual exams too. I ended up being able to 100% exams in 18 minutes at my quickest, with an average of 22, for a 90 minute exam - if I chose to answer the stuff in my head. In my final exams at school before going to uni I ended up being one of the few kids in the country (England) to get 100% in an exam that trended on Twitter for being so difficult (I personally think everyone whined because they only revised what normally came up).

Now I'm at uni studying maths and physics, while working at McDonald's to pay for my house, and my colleagues love asking me questions about quantum physics, space etc. I love it when someone whacks the calculator out and asks me a question they think would be too difficult to do in the head just to see if I can do it, and I end up beating them before they type it in.

That's insane.. I assumed she was on the autism spectrum and considered a savant. Either way, Definitely not a normal brain to be capable of that.

google fmri dead fish

i'll be waiting

Just.... How...

To help make it more comprehensible, there is likely a pattern that arises. You're trying to comprehend her literally calculating the math in that way that you've been taught or in a way that a computer would compute the numbers.

In reality, she likely had memorized thousands of patterns that numbers follow when you do certain things to them, kind of like how a rubik's cube expert can look at the cube and then solve it blindfolded.

So when given a certain large number, and some calculation to do with it, she could then "simply" find the result by knowing what pattern the numbers will fall into.

The pattern for a cubed root is pretty straight forward. If you get a friend to take a 3 digit number, XYZ, and cube it on a calculator and give you the answer. You can mentally work it out quite quickly.

The only pre-requisite is to know the cubes of numbers 1 - 9.

For example, take 119,823,157. As it ends in a 7, we know straight away that the original units number must be a 3. (3³=27). The million value, 119, is above 64 (4³) but below 125 (5³) so the number begins with a 4. The initial number is therefore 4Y3. 119 is far closer to 125 than 64, so the tens number is either 8 or a 9. A decision needs to be made whether it's 483 or 493 but with a bit of practice you'll get a feel of which one to go for (493).

That's pretty simplistic compared to this ladies skill of 23rd root. However, I suspect it's using a similar idea regarding patterns. The cubed root approach above can be done in 3 or 4 seconds with a bit of practice even though the computation you are doing in your head is not a cubic root calculation.

See guys, its just that simple

Now a 24th root. . . fuggetaboutit.

Jake Barnett quickly shows how he visualizes the addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of the number 32 in a ted talk on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq-FOOQ1TpE at 1:20

seems amazing but not simple for me as I read this many time and can not under how it work...I admit I am a litter bit ...

Walk in the park, I do it all the time.

wow. that was cool. never knew it worked like that but makes sense that it dsoes

Technosorcery.

the same technique applies for the 5th root as well. and the pattern for the last digit is even simpler.

might be that just counting the number of digits in the given result narrows down the possibilities when talking about integers raised to the 23rd power...

we also have to know exactly how the question was posed. did it came out of the blue ? or was it as a part of set of questions that were agreed upon beforehand?

this makes the story totally different from the M.O. point of view while the media can still celebrate on it.

if you are interested - check out the Arthur Benjamin books and lectures - tons of stuff like that

Correct the 5th Root results in a 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 pattern, whilst the 7th Root repeats the 3rd Root pattern; 1,8,7,4,5,6,3,2,1. This would continue throughout the odd numbers. Even numbers are harder because 4² ends in 6 as does 6², for example.

But you are right, the ladies skill is impressive even if a feat of memory. If it was a random question it's incomprehensible how she done it. However, if she knew she was going to have to work out a 23rd Root, then it's comprehensible as an extraordinary feat of memory.

So she just happened to know the value of 2^23, 3^23, 4^23, etc up to 9^23? Lol.

8,388,608 and 94,143,178,827 are the first two... I can't imagine remembering the number for 9^23

And the answer to her problem was 546,372,891^23 ... not exactly a small number. Absolutely unbelievable.

No, you missed the point. There are other patterns. Straight away you can work out the last digit as (any number that ends in 2)²³ will always end in 8, (any number that ends in 3)³ will end in 7 etc. There are patterns the whole way through that you can learn. If you read the article this lady had exceptional memory skills, better than I could ever hope for because I could never memorise the numbers and patterns involved.

A simpler example is try multiplying 15*10 in your head. I guarantee you don't, you know the pattern is to add the 0 to the 15 to get 150. Our brain works with patterns like this.

I had to read this many times to understand what you meant exactly, but now I understand it. Very clever! So can you give me an example besides the final digit? It seems you could use it with the first digit too. But beyond that... what can you do? She had to come up with 546,372,891 not just a single or double digit number.

Is it that she knows like the 126th digit is a 7 or whatever, then she knows the 3rd digit of 546,372,891 is an 8? Something along those lines? Or is that a terrible example

I was going to post something very similar. For the middle number, learning how to estimate is a little bit more complicated, but it is still something you can learn in an hour or two max.

For her record, she had a 201 digit number, which gives a 9 digit answer. The first two digits range from 54 to 60. The last digit of the answer is fully determinable by the last digit of the given number.

It is possible to expand the tricks used in the 3 digit example to the 9 digit problem. The last 3 digits can be found in a similar manner. Using the last 4 digits of the given number, you can determine the last 3 digits of the answer, except when the number ends in 5 or 0. But in those cases, the problem just gets significantly easier.

The first 2 digits are trivial to find, and expanding that to 3 digits is not difficult at all. If you memorize the first 3 digits of the the answer for each number between 54^23 and 60^23 (which you have to learn anyways to determine the first 2 digits), you can use that to estimate the 3rd digit of the answer in the same way you determined the middle digit in your example.

Actually, now that I think about it, you can use that to accurately estimate the next 2 digits, if you just memorize the first 4 digits of 54^23 to 60^23.

That's memorizing 7 four digit numbers to get the first 4 digits of the answer. Then you have to memorize about 800 numbers to get the last 3 digits, but there are plenty of patterns within that to cut that task into more manageable parts.

To get the middle 2 digits of the answer, you would have to come up with something else. The easiest way I can think of is to expand upon the trick for the first number. By learning the first 5-6 digits of the 23rd power of every number between 540 and 610, you can use that to fairly quickly determine the first 6 digits of the answer.

So in total, you would have to memorize 65-70 six digit numbers and 800 three digit numbers. Then you have to be able to recall them within 50 seconds. It's an impressive feat, but I think if anyone cared to set a record for solving 23rd roots of 201 digit numbers, you could accomplish that within a couple months of work.

Oh yeah. I did that on 8 seconds. Take that insanely smart Indian lady! /sarcasm

I hate maths but that was really nice

I'm just amazed I followed this explanation with complete comprehension. Since becoming a tutor, I'm understanding concepts so much better. That whole explain to understand thing really does work!

Except you started with a specific number and she had 201^2 numbers to choose from.

Also if you go the other way round 567891234²³ has 201 digits, 456789123²³ doesn't as doesn't 678912345²³. And if you compare 567891234²³ and 567891235²³ they change by about one 20 millionth, so it's less than 200 million possible numbers that land in the 201 digits and they all got 9 digits with the first one being a 5 or a 6 (I checked 499999999, 6000000 and 7000000).

for a very similar take, see this cool ted video: www.ted.com/talks/arthur_benjamin_does_mathemagic?language=en

90s_kid_approves.webm

Pretty much what this guy said, I mean what she did is fucking amazing but his logic applies to a lot of things in life, complicated things can become simple if you find the proper algorithm in which to work them.

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That's the whole concept behind Asimov's Psychohistory. If you haven't read the Foundation series I recommend it as hard as you can recommend anything.

I'd second that recommendation

The Hugo Awards created a "Best All-Time Series" award several decades back. Asimov told his friend that they had finally figured out a way to separate Lord of the Rings and put it on the pedestal it deserved. The Foundation trilogy won.

Arguably the greatest science fiction ever written

I still don't understand the fascination with LOTR. Very rich world, very thin story.

The world and characters were really well designed by the standards of his era. You'd need to go into more detail as to why you thought the story was thin.

I'd agree with anyone however that Tolkien's writing style is boring by today's standards. Unless it's being compared to Robert Jordan, LOTR moves extremely slowly.

The fascination comes from the fact that most current day fantasy comes from the ideas of Tolkien's rich world. What I mean is that the rich world is the reason that it was and is so successful.

The greatest evil exists and there's no way we can stop it.. except maybe if some little people do something impossible while a totally unrelated battle takes place in which the outcome doesn't matter, yet they win that battle anyway, because conveniently a bunch of ghosts decided at the last second to side with somebody for no reason.

I third that recommendation.... Unfortunately, no one can predict the Mule.

thats not really what psychohistory is. its that you can predict characteristics of large and complicated systems because the variance of the system is small compared to its size.

The concept of psychohistory is about the only interesting thing in that series. Which is still really cool. But the dialogue and plotting is something straight out of campy sci-fi b-movies from the 60s.

Well Foundation was published in 1951, so it's likely all those movies were influenced by Asimov.

And somehow, being aware of that fact doesn't make the text any more enjoyable. Disappointing, right?

The dialog is certainly campy, but I don't think the plot at all is...

The moment he called a character the Mule and then 200 pages later built up an enormous reveal about the character being sterile, he lost me forever. It's just not good plotting, sorry. Maybe the problem is that I read it for the first time as an adult.

The fact that it's the basis for modern sci-fi doesn't make it any more enjoyable. I'm glad I read it in order to see his ideas and gain a broader understanding of science fiction as a genre, but it's just not well-written by any modern standard.

Your'e kinda reducing all of the plot to a single reveal, which, granted, wasn't that much of a shocker. My point is that the surprise identity of the Mule is just one small aspect of the plot.

No, I'm using an example. The whole thing is written that way.

I mean, I guess we can agree to disagree, but one "shamalanish" reveal doesn't to me, prove your point. I didn't come away from Foundation feeling that the plot was campy, though again, the dialog definitely was.

/r/cliodynamics

http://www.angelfire.com/un/corosus/books/Asimov_the_foundation.pdf would this be it?

Meh. Read them but wasn't that impressed. I can see how he influenced a lot of science fiction but his own writings are pretty bland. If he was published today under a different name people wouldn't pay the books much attention.

That's basically the philosophical theory of hard determinism. It's pretty depressing, because if true it means that everything is essentially predetermined and there is no such thing as free will

[deleted]

I've thought about this a lot in the past few years. I don't know a whole lot about quantum mechanics so I'm asking this sincerely... are you saying that there are some aspects at some level that are purely random? If you knew all variables from all states would it still be impossible to determine what would react and how? This has been my only hope that free will actually exists so I'd really like some good news here!

[deleted]

Well since they're acting according to wave equations they're 30% left and 70% right simultaneously.

Your personal wave equation has you currently on the moon, just with very low probability.

It's not a binary though, it's both right and left until you observe it. This is the basis of Quantum Computing, instead 1 and 0 you have 1, 0 and both 1 and 0.

This is true. I deigned to leave that out for the beginners' sake, but yes, there is a superposition of both at the same time until the wave is observed. This is what Schrodinger's cat tells us about. Unobserved, the wave function occupied both points, but once observed, the function collapses and occupies just one point.

I'll go ahead an ask the obvious...what would act upon the particle to ever make it fork left? It's hard to wrap my head around the idea that cause/effect is completely suspended here. Could there simply be something we don't understand yet that makes it fork left occasionally?

Well, my explanation was a bit simplified, and therefore flawed. Here's how it really is:

While unobserved, the particle exists in a superposition that has a probability wave of being 70% right and 30% right at the same time. Once observed, that wave function collapses, and the particle chooses which state it's in based on probability. Think Schrodinger's cat. Until it's observed, the cat is both dead and alive, and it's not until the cat is observed that it chooses a single state to be in. Now, it may be that the cat has a probability wave of 99.9999% alive and 0.0001% dead, but it is still in a superposition of both dead and alive.

Ok, I think I'm getting there. It's not a matter of a marble driving down a hill and being coerced left or right, it's just left or right once observed, yes? I think what I'm missing here is the momentum or linear progression from one state to the next. Marble is on top of hill -> SOMETHING HAPPENS -> marble is observed at the end of the left or right path. Alive cat goes in box -> configure poison, etc. -> SOMETHING HAPPENS -> observe alive or dead cat. I keep getting hung up on the 'something happens' part. Does that part simply not exist? Thanks for taking the time to explain some of this!

I think this question is straying into areas that I'm not qualified to answer, so I'm gonna say I don't know. Sorry! I hope you found this informational, though. If you wish to learn more, I'm sure /r/askscience can help guide you to the right resources.

Since you seem to know something about it, perhaps you can answer the question I've been carrying around ever since I first read about this:

How can anyone say with any certainty at all that behaviour is 'probabilistic' rather the 'deterministic' given that it is certainly impossible to recreate identical conditions? How is it possible to rule out effects that we do not yet understand or are not yet able to detect which would determine the outcome?

Because from the perspective of a half-educated (when it comes to physics) pleb, this looks to me like scientists giving up the search for the deterministic cause.

[deleted]

The quote you've put in there makes absolutely no sense to me at all. It seems to be begging the question rather than explaining how we've come to know that results are probabilistic rather than deterministic.

I do not understand why the fact that we are much better at controlling our environment (and therefore experimental apparatus) than we were in the past suggests that we've come anywhere near the maximum level of control or understanding.

My other problem with this is that even if you could control EVERYTHING in an experiment, you still wouldn't have identical conditions because you have moved in time. If there were a way to go back in time and run the last second again, a probabilistic universe would certainly be different, right? But a deterministic one would be identical. We can't run this experiment as far as I know. Again, not trying to troll, just trying to understand a little better.

Basically what arahat108 said.

:( still don't get it.

If you want, you can do some research on the experiments that have been conducted. I'm not learned enough, myself, to fully answer your question. The experiment that arahat listed (the pendulum one) would be a god place to start.

Essentially yes even if you knew all variables involved, the behaviour of quarks cannot be predicted. Einstein actually disagreed with this in his famous book "God does not play dice" but he has since been proven wrong.

Keep in mind that the lack of determinism does not necessarily prove that free will exists. You have as much control over something that's random as you do over something that isn't.

Yeah, and I think hard determinism has fallen out of favor with the majority of philosophy, I think compatabilism views tend to be more popular. I was just pointing out that that's basically what OP was referring too.

but who's to say that in the future physicists won't use 100% deterministic models ?

Free will is an illusion. We act based on impulses and what has previously happened to us. Our brains are programmed to respond in specific ways to specific stimuli

Not if you use a compatibilist definition of free will http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

Though yeah many people consider that not free will. But personally I wouldn't consider adding random factors to the process as being particularly desirable.

Determinism means your actions are a direct result of who you are - your character, your preferences, your thoughts. Add randomness and you sometimes do stuff without a reason. You might be argue that makes you more free but I would argue that it wouldn't have much to do with will.

For not compatibilistic definitions I agree with J.J.C. Smart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilemma_of_determinism#Deterministic

The problem is that there is a fundamental limit to how much we can know. It is called Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

It basically says that we can never know exactly both the momentum and location of a particle simultaneously.

This means that at the small scale, not everything can be predicted.

That's only when working with physical particles. In the virtual world you CAN know both at the same time.

You just need to know the starting state of the universe

But he was talking about the real world...

You can't answer a question by changing the question. I could also have said what you said.

No. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle crumble to bits if we can know the start conditions. If we can know the start condition of the real world, we could know the precise number of air molecules you will be displacing tomorrow.

Nope, there is a fundamental randomness on the quantum scale.

Small uncertainties in the beginning will have a large effect on the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

You will never know anything about the start conditions unless you make them up

Edit: Even if you know the starting conditions, nature will almost never follow your predictions due to the fundamental randomness.

Meh. We will probably find our way out of that - Random is almost always not random.

The only way out AFAWK is to make our own world i.e. The Matrix.

Well, he thinks he's talking about the real world. But there's a number of theories out there that suggest that we may be living in a simulation of some sort ...

(Of course, such theories are rarely falsifiable so they're not really scientific. But that doesn't mean that one of them might not be correct!)

Oh and the Uncertainty Principle arises due to float point inaccuracy or some arbitrary limit set by our overlords? Lol.

The Matrix would be cool but it's best to ignore it, really.

Not exactly, he's talking about simulating the real world. Big difference

Yes but you will need some sort of starting state.

Finding that is where the Heisenberg Principle craps on the problem.

E.g. to "see" an atom, you would have to send in an EM-wave with a very small wavelength and wait for it to bounce back. Great, you know the position. But that EM-wave had a very high energy due to the small wavelength and has given the atom some velocity in an unknown direction.

Edit: There will always be an uncertainty. It will add up over time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

If you are simulating it then surely quantum effects should come into it?

You would a computer that could simulate every fundamental particle of the universe. Unfortunately, that takes a computer the size of the universe

Our universe is that computer simulation. Hi fellow sim.

a/s/l?

15f cali

send me a few hundred bucks so I can come visit you. make check out to cash or send cash.

[deleted]

I replied just from the nostalgia of seeing it. The joke was the additional scam. "Hot chick" will come visit you (send some random gif of chick and the po box) just needs couple hundred for gas, needs vacation anyway, yadda yadda. You just played scratch off and lost a couple hundred bucks.

But if you just want a simulation to determine the ultimate question of the universe, you just need a computer the size of the Earth.

Mostly Harmless

Unfortunately, that takes a computer the size of the universe

I'm just picturing in my head what hard drives looked like in 1975 and I'm thinking that with enough time and technology it could be done in less space.

There are theoretical limits on informational and computational density. We are so far from them that we might as well not be computing at all; but they do exist.

If we tried to use computers as we know them to do the modeling.... It would require an infinite number of universes all doing nothing but being filled with computers calculating the universe.

And it would still be slower than the actual universe by a few orders of magnitude.

I think the key words here are "computers as we know them."

Yes. Even, however, assuming that we could achieve functionality valid quantum computing and compute at the theoretical limits, we'd still need multiple universes. Even with spatial manipulation to bypass the limit of c for networking purposes.

I'm going to cling stubbornly to the notion that one of my distant descendants will have a pocket iUniverse.

One of my distant descendants -- by which I mean a variation of my own uploaded consciousness -- will have access to multiple universes.

So there.

No, as kingphysics said ... the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle nixes that idea.

Unfortunately, that takes a computer the size of the universe

... to completely model a grain of sand.

Unless you have quantum computers.

minority report (and probably many other sci fi stories)

You dare speak the profane rite by which is invoked the Demon of Laplace?!

You monster!

False! There's our old friend Mr. Heisenberg to contend with.

Shhh, now everyone knows my programming secrets!

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the word algorithm referred to an exhaustive process used to find a solution that is guaranteed to work given enough time, whereas a heuristics were techniques that use patterns and other such things to arrive at a solution faster.

Can confirm - YouTube + weed + 5 hours and I can now "solve" a rubix cube in roughly 50-60 seconds. It varies by hoe it's been mixed.

Has anyone figured out the algorithm for solving bat shit crazy?

you guys saw that Morgan Freeman special too, huh?

how do I find more algorithms

Does that logic apply to banging Scarlett Johansson?

Except for some problems that are easy to check the answer to but hard to efficiently calculate in a general way.

Like a cross country trip to visit 126 cities. You want to reduce total gas cost. What's the order in which you should visit the cities and go home?

I still tell people this story almost 6 years later because I was so impressed by it. Obviously not nearly on the same scale as this person, but the company I used to work for I was in the IT department and we had just gotten in a bunch of those USB cellular cards and we're starting to assign them to users. The CEO of the company comes down one day and asked me how many of them we have, it was like 189 or something, and then he ask me how much we have to pay for each one monthly, it was like $47. Within a split second of me saying $47 he rattled off how much it was costing us for all of those monthly, so 189 x 47. It really was quicker than the snap of a finger, I was floored. I've always considered myself to be a quick thinker, but the even a problem like that would have taken me a couple seconds to solve in my head. People can do some amazing things.

Algorithm is such a nice word

Wait so if something hard comes up and I figure out how to solve the problem , then I can solve the problem? No fuckin way

yeah when you put it that way its really not that impressive

stupid bitch

Thanks, I laugh a little harder than I should lol.

That's fucking hilarious.

I love you

Aaaaand I woke the kids (again) with my night laughter...

What a casual amirite!

[deleted]

starts sentence with straw man, fails to see the joke

Gotta love pseudo-intellectuals! me so smart!

Downvotes because the guy was clearly kidding.

i dont even know how to SAY that number let alone calculate it. quadzillions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers

Somewhere between a Vigintillion and a Centillion, I imagine. But I have no idea how to figure it out.

EDIT: Looked further down. Looks like somewhere between a Sextaguntillion (10^183) and Septuaguntillian (10^213)

Sextaguntillion is my "bedroom" name.

I play AdventureCapitalist so I know these numbers

I think it's a Cunnilingustillian.

Something about reptillian humanoids...

There are tons of tricks anyone can do. I can tell you immediately without even thinking about it, that the last digit of the root can't be 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8 since any power of those will also be even. I also know the last digit can't be 5. Can't be 3, since 3^4 is 81 so 3^24 also ends in 1 so 3^23 won't end with 1. Can't be 7, since 7^2 is 49 so 7^4 ends in 1 so 7^24 ends in 1 so 7^23 won't end with 1. Can't be 9, since 9^2 is 81 so 9^24 ends in 1 so 9^23 won't end with 1. So, by only looking at one digit, I can already narrow down that the last digit of the answer is 1. There's a lot of little tricks that can help simplify problems like these, though it's still a horrendously large number, so it still takes a good amount of raw brainpower to get the other 7 digits.

I don't think that logic falls to roots, because of hard it is to calculate a square root. Let alone a 23rd root.

She wouldn't be calculating the square root. She would be applying her knowledge of patterns created in numbers when a square root is calculated.

Let's say that when you take the coinclink^tm of a number represented in base-10, every instance of the number 8 becomes 5, 9 becomes 3, 6 becomes 2, etc. She could just go down the line of numbers and change each number to get the result.

It wouldn't be nearly that simple but if you had knowledge of real mathematic patterns like this, you could do it.

Richard Feynman, in his book "Surely You're Joking" has an a anecdote about that. Before electronic calculators were invented some guy tried to sell him a mechanical calculating device. At first the device was faster than Feynmann, but after the second or third iteration Feynman was faster, because he understood the patterns of how numbers work, and the calculator was just using brute force.

Some people process some things differently.

Saying 'she likely had memorized thousands of patterns that numbers follow' is idiotic.

I dont know is a much better answer.

I had a math professor in college that would write on the board with both hands simultaneously, took his sabbatical at the CIA cryptography center, and just through-and-through the most intelligent person I have ever met. I don't know how it even came up, but one day in class us students gave him any random number and he would within seconds tell us the log (I think base 10, may have been base e) of that number to 5 or 6 significant figures.

And He could do it pretty much just like you explained: He conceptually knew how numbers reacted when passed through the logarithmic function, especially as they converged to the next "base" - so like, if to start I know that log(10)=1 and log(100)=2, and I also know that as n increases from 11 to 99 the log function output's percentage difference decreases [e.g. log(12)-log(11)=~.037, but log(99)-log(98)=~.004), then I can interpolate from there..... Yet he was doing it while being able to not just "guestimate," but give actual accurate answers.

I think you're right for the most part, but the Wikipedia page claims she started doing this at the age of 3 even without any formal education! I'm sure she improved vastly since age 3, but no formal education is just stunning.

Or perhaps, formal education is what is dumbing us all down! ;)

Ah yes, in retrospect it's really quite simple, just like solving a Rubik's Cube blindfolded.

Well since you summed it up so simply, how anybody can't do this is beyond me....

While probably not easy to do, I presume it's possible to program a computer to do the same correct? I'd assume you might faster results for specific calculations.

I hate being that guy, but solving a rubik's cube blindfolded requires around 3 algorithms, which can be learned in around 10 minutes. The rest is all memory.

That description works for pretty much any level of conceptual understanding. It's patterns all the way down. Neat.

I have left reddit for Voat due to years of admin mismanagement and preferential treatment for certain subreddits and users holding certain political and ideological views.

The situation has gotten especially worse since the appointment of Ellen Pao as CEO, culminating in the seemingly unjustified firings of several valuable employees and bans on hundreds of vibrant communities on completely trumped-up charges.

The resignation of Ellen Pao and the appointment of Steve Huffman as CEO, despite initial hopes, has continued the same trend.

As an act of protest, I have chosen to redact all the comments I've ever made on reddit, overwriting them with this message.

If you would like to do the same, install TamperMonkey for Chrome, GreaseMonkey for Firefox, NinjaKit for Safari, Violent Monkey for Opera, or AdGuard for Internet Explorer (in Advanced Mode), then add this GreaseMonkey script.

Finally, click on your username at the top right corner of reddit, click on comments, and click on the new OVERWRITE button at the top of the page. You may need to scroll down to multiple comment pages if you have commented a lot.

After doing all of the above, you are welcome to join me on Voat!

Yep it's called Vedic Math. http://youtu.be/grkWGeqW99c

That's fine, but we're not built to even be able to remember a number that long without some real effort. I couldn't do that in 50 seconds, much less operate on it. I can't even comprehend that part of it.

Dat algorithm.

If this is true, why don't we have processors that calculate based on these same patterns, rather than rote math?

That is to say, you're making the whole thing seem like a simple trick. I'm willing to believe it might be, but if it is, and if it can be this accurate, why are we spending dramatic amounts of energy doing 'real' math if it can all be reduced to 'memorizing a few thousand' patterns?

A superbrain can also help, but I agree with you.

She's bubblesorting in her head

So it's kind of like how people working in factory's can put together really complex things without watching what they're doing?

Similar to how you quickly know the answer to a simple multiplication equation because you memorized all those tables

In fact, there is very little memorization involved. She is one of a few savants in the world. They see math very differently. In some cases, they literally see math. One savant reported that complex number problems formed shapes in his head when he thought about them, and all he had to do was figure out what "shape" matched with the "hole" left in the equation. He never did any calculations whatsoever consciously.

That's really interesting. Consider this, maybe those shapes that savant sees are the patterns I mention in my hypothesis!

its very possible. We have almost no idea what is going on that allows them that kind of subconscious processing capacity.

If you want to check out the documentary I'm drawing this from, it's all on youtube, and it's quite good

One thing that's fascinating is how impressed he is with normal people doing calculations. Like, he's blown away at people who are able to memorize complex calculations, as though they are the abnormal ones.

For example, I can take the fifth root of any number in a few seconds, as long as the answer is an integer between 0 and about 105.

I'm still impressed with the 23rd root thing, and even more impressed at the other thing from the wikipedia article, because multiplication of randomly chosen big numbers is simply hard. Yes, there are patterns, but to know a pattern for every 13 digit number is, in itself, very impressive.

There's definitely a pattern that arises... All the digits in her answer were 1-9 rearranged, and there's only a 1 in 43,046,721 chance of that happening if it was coincidence! Although in honesty, 43 milliion isn't that much in the grand scheme of things really is it?

Well, she has claimed that Goddess Saraswati (Hindu deity of Knowledge) whispered the numbers in her ear, i.e. the numbers just appeared in front of her eyes and she recited them out!

You don't have to memorize thousands of patterns. You just have to memorize a couple thousand numbers and you're set to be able to do this. Most of the digits in the 201 digit number are completely useless. If you gave someone the first 9 digits, they could figure out the answer with 100% accuracy. That means even with the least effective way to brute forcing this task, you only have to memorize a billion numbers. However, you can use tricks to effectively break down the problem into smaller parts. You memorize about a thousand numbers to determine the first 5 digits of the answer. Then you use that to calculate the 6th digit of the answer. Then you memorize about another 1000 numbers to determine the last 3 digits of the answer.

This only requires you to need to look at the first 6 digits and last 3 digits of the 201-digit number. So she doesn't even have to spend time reading the entire number.

She computes trends then? So what you're saying is that she is a Mentat. Awesome.

Kind of like fractions of x/7 but I'm too lazy to explain since nobody will read this

  1. Mathematics is the language of nature.
  2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
  3. If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge.

It's survival of the fittest, Max! And we've got the fucking guns!

Not necessarily. There are some people born with the part of the brain that is used when doing a math problem linked to something like the part that is used for breathing. Making it second nature to the person.

Source: I saw a documentary on it and wish someone could find it for me.

You're probably right. I don't think my hypothesis and yours are mutually exclusive though. She probably had an innate ability for understanding numbers, which is what allowed her to recognize and memorize these patterns.

That sounds most accurate.

But does she do the calculation consciously? It might be that some other part of her brain does it for her transparently. For her it might be as effortless as catching a ball.

¯ \ (ツ)/¯

Edit: some sort of formatting made the backslash disappear.

\

Edit: Now you don't have the upper part of your arms.

¯_(ツ)_/¯\

[deleted]

meatwad!

Meatwad make the money, see? Meatwad get the honeys, G.

[deleted]

Ice on my fingers and my toes and I'm a Taurus.

Dance is forbidden.

I count on my fingers

Ahhh.... I thought it was "ice on my fingers and my children are my cars." Not that that made any damn sense.

I am the QUEEEEEN of France!

http://i.imgur.com/avguyBC.gif

My spoon is tooooo big. :D

I am a BANANA!

you just took me straight back to my freshman dorm room

/¯\__/¯\(ツ)¯__/¯\

http://i.imgur.com/e5KLmUc.jpg

http://b1969d.medialib.glogster.com/media/72b7215889d2883b9c6797b41ef0b1afaa3c3639949cdabaa79e1c87ef3b3850/slumber-party-panic-adventure-time-club-29916837-642-362.png

walk like an Egyptian!

\_/¯\_(ツ)¯\_/¯\_

Guess it's time to switch hands ;)

[removed]

What is this shit?

Ghazi pls leave.

that must hurt...

Kinda looks like a cross between Poopsmith and Homsar

I bet that took longer than 50 seconds.

It's an escape character. It's necessary if you try to do a # at the beginning of the post

Now I have "Walk Like an Egyptian" stuck in my head. Thanks.

type ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ to produce ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

¯√ (ツ)√¯

¯\(ツ)/¯

¯\_(ツ)_/¯, actually.

Damn it I thought it still looked weird.

¯\\\(ツ)/¯

= ¯\(ツ)/¯

I know that usually these human calculators are actually just people who memorized massive amounts of multiplications...

But it seems like this lady is legit.

Short of knowing the exact problems ahead of time, 'faking' via rote memorization would be impossible.. There are just too many numbers. Rather, as stated above, these people solve complex problems by memorizing algorithms that would apply to large families of problem types. Easier to memorize 10 rules than 10k different multiplicatons.

yeah, the only way to cheat .. .well

they needed a special fucking computer back in 1977 to work it out to 100% accuracy, so it's not like knowing beforehand would really help the lay person

I wouldn't call someone memorizing massive amounts of multiplication as "not legit". I'd call them "not me".

the brain is highly parallel. I'm guessing it starts with an approximation and narrows things down to exact answer over many iterations taking place at same time

She probably splits it up into more managble, familiar pieces and works from there.

that sounds super easy. we should make that a national standard, and force people to adopt that method.

I agree this method should be more common in the core curriculum of public education.

I think this is just another one of those things people good at math naturally do. Like 23 * 17 might seem hard to do fast in your head but it's really easy if you just do 23 * 10(230) + 7 * 20(140) + 7 * 3(21) = 391

I thought of it as 20^2 - 3^2 . which gave me the answer of 391 in less than a second.

With bigger numbers I always think of it like that, if they are somewhat close to each other.

How did you get the 20^2 and 3^2? I'm genuinely curious the rules involved to derive those numbers as a solution to the equation.

It's calculated by noting this is a difference of squares.

23 * 17 = (20 + 3) * (20 - 3) = 20 * 20 + 3 * 20 - 20 * 3 - 3 * 3 = 20^2 - 3^2

23 and 17 are above and below 20 by 3.

Uh it's just something I noticed sometime in elementary school that I've been using ever since. At first I just noticed that it was 1, 1+3, 1+3+5, 1+3+5+7, etc., away from it. But then I realized those are just squares. I also don't think I knew what squaring something meant, but I knew that you could multiply something by itself.

Edit: Oh! You actually learn this in Algebra 2.
It's the (a+b)(a-b)=a^2 -b^2

Edit: I think it's called the difference of squares formula.

Damn i never thought of that shit. I still don't understand it completely but it's already helping me a little bit. thanks

Damn, that's actually really clever. Now I just have to try to remember this...

are you sure your username is not autism101123?

(math savant)

i did 2320 = 460 then 23 3 - 69 then subtracted 69 from 460

We could call it "collective basis" or something.

Not sure if you're joking or not...but, if you are not joking: why? We have computers to perform rote numerical calculations, and teaching kids to think algorithmically (which would be the only way to go about solving something like this in your head) is impressive...but unless we have to engage in a Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible prohibits the use of Thinking Machines...it's not of much practical use except as a parlor trick.

We're far better off with what Common Core is trying to teach: fundamental concepts of math and a basic sense of how numbers and mathematical operations actually work. This leads to an understanding of math instead of what we have often had in the past: rote, mechanical, algorithmic learning of how to do a math problem without understanding why. That might work okay for arithmetic, but it kills kids' desire to learn math once they get up to algebra and have to start thinking more abstractly.

As far as breaking a bigger problem up into smaller problems...I feel like we already do teach that. I mean, we taught that even when I went through elementary school about two decades ago.

Side note: OH DEAR GOD. THE early 90s were 20 years ago.

I think your post is well written, but I noticed a wee little error. I believe you meant "rote" as in mechanical repetition, not "wrote" as in scribbling symbols on paper.

I like the idea of getting kids to understand why the math works instead of saying do it just because this is how it is done, but algorithms are pretty important too. They seem to be taught in any computer science course I've ever taken and I think they have their place. Plus, once you understand the math, it is really nice to have a simple, algorithmic way to simplify a problem, such as the chain rule in calculus.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't show kids specific methods for doing things and teach them various standard tools for working out solutions. I'm talking about what I'd broadly call algorithmic learning/teaching.

For example, when I was in elementary school we learned a form of subtraction called "compensation" (sometimes referred to a "sliding board subtraction"; it wasn't this, either; that makes sense, number theory-wise). It was a horrible, nonsensical way to teach subtraction, because, while it gave the right answer, it gave no tangible, graspable reasoning behind why you were manipulating the numbers in that way.

That's just one example, but that's how a lot of math has been taught over the years: Do this. Then do this. Then do this. Then do this. Then there is an answer. And that doesn't work once you get up to even just solving things like basic algebraic equations, because you have to be able to understand the why and how in order to think through the problem.

Also: I know wrote vs. rote. Just a typo. Thanks for catching it. If I bothered to reread stuff I post on here, I'd probably have caught it. But, then I'd also have been spending time proofreading my reddit posts. And that's a sad road down which I do not yet want to travel. (Not saying that it's sad you noticed. I probably would have in someone else's post, too.)

The mid 90s were 20 years ago.

It's DJ Jazzy Jeff's 50th birthday today!

The spice is life baby...

I hear that it must flow.

Until the end of time.

Do you have kids? Just curious.

No. But I work in a K-12 school system as an IT admin (and have worked in K-12 education for about a decade, now), so I have constant contact (and am friends) with plenty of teachers and students. My mom taught high school math for 35 years (just retired, but still volunteers as a tutor, and is familiar with the common core standards); my dad taught elementary school for 33 years (retired a few years); and my aunt (who I'm close with) has taught third grade for about 34 years and is still teaching.

So I get a fairly broad perspective on education. I've heard an especially large amount on what upper-level math teachers have found deficient about elementary-level math education.

I also have young quasi-nephews and nieces who I often spend time with. So kids aren't a completely foreign species to me on a personal, non-professional level, either.

[deleted]

No point to argue it as both our minds are made up. I was just wondering if you've had a child that personally suffered through it is all.

My (significantly younger) brother just "suffered" through the high school curriculum for that past two years (when the state's full adoption kicked in). Or, wait, not "suffered", but did just fine and had no issues.

And, frankly, my mind's not fixed on this at all. If someone were to come to me (once we have a go at actual implementation, not one or two years in) and present evidence that the standards weren't working or that there is a better set of standards which would work better, I'd be all on board with the alternative.

Because Common Core isn't something created out of whole cloth. They're evidence-based, using research on what techniques and topics are most useful to most students. They were built collaboratively between teachers, administrators, and educational experts based on what worked in existing standards, and this was done at the prompting of the Council of Chief State School Officers and that National Governor's Association, so they're not even something that was just taken up by the federal government of its own accord. They're also intended to build on the subject matter each year to a cumulative whole, so something that seems pointless one year will almost certainly turn out to be prepping for a new concept the next year.

In fact, speaking of evidence, the earliest results we have would seem to indicate that the Common Core standards are having the desired result.

Have you read the math standards? Because they're nothing terribly outrageous or strange. They're also not wildly, wildly different from what we had before, just more focused on conceptual learning and more deeply focused on fewer topics. You can even see how each year builds on previous years and see the whole structure.

They're a basic framework adopted (more or less) nationwide to try to address former deficiencies in the standards and ensure that all our kids are all getting roughly the same math and reading content regardless of what state they're in. It's about time we joined every other developed nation in having some basic national standards. And as standards go, they're not terribly restrictive: local schools still set the actual curriculum; the standards just define the material that students should be proficient at in most grade levels.

If a student is having trouble, their parent should set up a meeting with teachers and/or principals for remedial work or tutoring, so I hope you do that if you have not already. Most schools and most teachers will work to help a struggling student. I know my mother would stay after work until 4:30 or 5 pm most nights (hours after she was required to be there, contractually) to work with students who were struggling with material if the students were willing to put in the time and effort. Heck, she does it voluntarily, now in her retirement, because she enjoys helping students.

I believe most of the problems we have with education in our society are from lack of parental involvement anyways. Additionally, I don't believe the ends justifies the means and just because kids may be performing better on tests does not justify the methods used to get them there. This is a fundamental issue with CC - at least in my opinion. To me, CC is all about political gain and economic profit (as most things are these days) . There is very little altruistic about it. But that's just my opinion and I don't really feel like a 7 paragraph justification at this time (although am fully prepared for one). I do appreciate your thoughtful commentary though. It's always good to hear all sides. Best, me

spelling edit

[deleted]

Awh, fuck. I know that. I should edit my copy better. Thanks for catching it.

It's almost as if people thought of teaching methods that simplify calculations before... Like logs for example, which are taught in absolutely every maths class ever. However, since we now have calculators, nobody is interested in remembering log tables anymore (and for good reason).

It's called Vedic maths. My school made it compulsory for a year. Many kids failed in it and eventually it was made an optional subject. But Vedic maths made regular maths easy.

Edit: I studied in India

Sadly, with no child left behind, I'm pretty sure would be low on the list.

I don't think they were starting a pun thread.

I didn't mean to make a pun. Wait - I made a pun? Was it /r/DadJokes level?

They were making a pun thread, that's what common core math teaches

And that's what confuses and scares us old folks...

"What do you mean, you don't know how to do long division? How do you divide 1302 by 25?"

"You take 25x10 (250), and subtract it from 1302. Repeat, counting how many times you do that (5 times). Then go to 25's and and keep on subtracting those until you get close (2 times), add up the number of 25s and that's the answer with remainder... 52 remainder 2

Its a great method if you're already inclined to think that way, I'm not sure how easy it is to teach though

Easier than long division.

And thats why I'm in engineering. I miss the jokes more often than not.

I don't understand what you mean

If we were actually preparing people who would calculate the roots of 200-digit numbers on a regular basis, teaching them this heuristic is a fantastic idea. Sure their parents won't be able to help them with their homework, but their parents don't even remember how to do long division.

That's what I do. I'm not super good at it, so imagine it on a larger scale, but if instead of trying to multiple 8 * 15, think about 15 * 2 = 30. So in my head it goes something like

[[15,15] (30), [15,15] (30)] (60) * 2 = 120.

I think of the numbers in chunks that are easier on a small scale and put them together and the math comes almost immediately.

But like I said, I'm not very good at it.

that's exactly how i do my math, but what i was referring to was the common core mess that the US pushed on the teachers and children. not everyone does things like us, but they're grading them on doing it one specific way.

I was agreeing with you. They should be teaching more advanced processes like this once you reach high school.

got it. my fault!

What's the point of it?

It's very useful. It started for me in elementary, I'm not good at memorizing and we were supposed to know our "times tables." I just got good at counting really fast. So for something like 8*7, 5th grade me would have thought, "7, 14, 28, 56."

Ya but how much do you have to split it down to make it manageable? I'd lose track after breaking it down into more than a few calculations. That's what's so insane.

I would say the same thing about rubics cubes before I learned how to do them. After I learned the 3x3x3 and played with it enough times that I could start to create my own algorithms I realized that much of my knowledge applied to 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 and 6x6x6 and 7x7x7. I was able to almost completely solve a 4x4x4 the first time I sat down with one. The thing is that when you work with something enough you get a few small patterns to look for then when you find them you already know the answer to that whole section where the pattern applies. To give you some idea what that is like with numbers, a 3x3x3 has over 12,000,000,000,000 possibilities so each state can be thought of to represent a number. So it isn't unheard of to do very large calculations with only a couple of small algorithms.

She is insanely brilliant saying all that though and probably sees numbers in very different ways.

Yeah, still insane, but it's kind of like if you asked me 43 * 27. I would do 4 * 27 = 108. 108 * 10 = 1080. 1080 + 27 * 3 = 1,161. She just does it on a whole different level.

"Tell how to make 10 when giving the 23rd root of 916748676920039158098660927585380162483106.........."

You thought it was Divide and Conquer, but it was me, Dynamic Programming!

Edit: Dionamic

She probably sits next to an Asian kid at all times.

She is Asian ...

Have an upvote for remembering that India is indeed part of Asia. And for also knowing what a continent is.

India is a subcontinent!

Speak English, Doc! We ain't scientists!

This was a particularly bad case of somebody being cut in half.

The wrong kid died!

Wrong Kid Died

Get outa here dewi. We're doin cocaine! It turns all your bad feelings into good feelings. Its a nightmare!

And you didn't pay for drugs, not once

And you slept with me too, and I've had confused feelings about that for a long time!

and you didn't once pay for drugs

It gives you a boner.

In twenty years, not once have you thrown a woman my way. You don't think we like cheating on our wives too?

"The siamese cat is a symbol of nobility in Ancient Egypt."
"Fuck nobility!"
"Fuck Ancient Egypt!"

Fuck... cats!!!

Are you kidding me?!?! A Walk Hard references thread! EVERYBODY GETS UPVOTES!

bouncing on trampoline -"It has changed me!!, I'm inventing this whole different type of music called shmusic.!!"

i dont understand the reference

He needs more blankets and less blabkets!

"I'm cut in half pretty bad here, Dewey."

[deleted]

It's what plants crave.

Think of it this way. If someone is asking me what 8×112 is, my first rough estimate would be "800ish." I did that by calculating 8×100. While I am saying that I am fine tuning, so now I either know 8×12 is 96 or I go through another iteration "It's about 880" (8×100 + 8×10). Then I would finally say 896 on the third pass after I added 8×100+8×10+8×2.

So you are going through the process iteratively fine tuning the answer as you go.

That is a much easier problem that could be solved in 50 seconds.

Right of course, the person I was replying to implied that they didn't understand what an iterative process would be. I have no idea how to solve the posted problem, but was providing a simple example of an iterative process that almost anyone could understand.

Damnit man I'm a doctor not a scientist

You're paid to think, mister sciennntist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2FJf6opsoY

the brain is highly parallel.

My ass. Humans cant even focus on more than one thing at once much less conscious parallel processing.

Nobody said "conscious."

You're talking about doing a mathematical calculation. You arent exactly blurting out calculus in your sleep.

The brain actually does a lot of parallel processing, but if she's a mental calculator its probably highly likely that she does most of it subconsciously :)

edit: Sub instead of un*

Does anyone else read an emoticon at the end of a reddit post as "so, fuck you, buddy!"?

[deleted]
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.3817

What is this?

Oh, I get it, now!

...so, fuck you, buddy!

I always do it when people seem aggrevated, it usually shows in the reply whether they were/are or if they just speak like that! :P

Nah, come on. You do it to be a prick.

But do you know why you do things just to be a prick?

Because you're a prick.

;-)

she does most of it unconsciously

How?

I'm sure he means "subconsciously."

Gonna steal something from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I'm sure he got it from somewhere else.

I throw a ball into the air, underhand, at an angle of 45 degrees at an approximate velocity of 20 mph. Accounting for wind speed and all other environmental factors you can imagine, calculate the exact location of the ball relative to me when it's 4.5 feet from the ground in its parabolic arc, and tell me exactly how long it will take to get to that position. I'll go negotiate an auto loan while you do the calculations necessary

Instead, why don't I just throw a ball at you and you'll catch it?

That's how your brain does complex math subconsciously.

Thanks thats exactly what I meant, also your example is pretty darn accurate!

You do a lot of conscious actions with unconscious step-by-steps to do the action. You don't concentrate on leaning forward, lifting up your leg and bending your knee just enough to have your foot land flat so that you fall on that leg that's going to balance you before you do it all over again.

You just walk.

Yes, but this is a conscious thought process we're talking about.

This Indian lady begs to differ.

She is either the exception, does really fast serial processing using her method or just has a really good method.

I should think it's pretty obvious that she's an exception

Exactly, which is why saying the human brain is highly parallel is not relevant

Maybe not consciously the way you're thinking about it, but the brain IS highly parallel. It's why we're still better at visual and voice recognition than machines.

We literally can walk and chew gum at the same time.

We literally can walk and chew gum at the same time.

I specified that Im talking about conscious parallelism.

We literally can walk, keep balance while walking, avoid hitting objects nearly flawless while walking, asert any danger during that walking, compensate for elevations near effortless while walking, constant keep track of a dozen objects unconciously and chew bubble gum at the same time, while also thinking about whatever with accompanying audiovisual imagination that probably grabs memory in raw data at a higher bandwidth than the average RAM stick, all at the same time.

I struggle to take a poo and reddit at the same time.

Choose the poo.

Pooing ain't easy but it's necessary

That's how I choose which kind of cheese I want.. Gouda or chipotle Gouda

But... narrowing down can't be done in parallel...

it can, considering that each iteration involves a random factor. Several parallel processes can compute new iteration with a different random factor, then pick the one that's closest to the answer,

Yes, you can get the answer with brute force and do many calculations in parallel. How one would figure out which one of those is the correct answer afterwards is not trivial, may be very complicated and can not be done in parallel.

Regardless, my point was that you can't iterate or narrow down in parallel, where, over many steps, you take the previous answer to calculate a better results. There is no previous answer in a parallel computation.

Hope that makes it a bit more clear.

Its not highly parallel at the conscious level. Try multiplying 13x7 while simultaneously composing a haicu about a dog.

yes, not on conscious level. I'm pretty sure when people like her are calculating math problems, they don't do it the same way we do it - using conscious thought all the way thru. Her consciousness probably just starts the process, and then the answer sort of comes up by itself from the subconscious level.

The real question is, how was she able to do this so quickly and easily when no one else can? What is it about her brain that was so special?

Like Newton's Method possibly?

I thought our brain is single threaded, but very good at pretending to be parallel.

A place to start would be to look at the total length of the final number, 201 digits. 100,000,000^23 would be 184 digits long. 1,000,000,000^23 would be 207 digits long. Therefor the value must lie somewhere between those numbers. IF you start out with an approximation of 4.8677e200 I was able to simplify it down to 3.2e823sqrt(3.248677)

Took me a little longer than 50 seconds though

You're 1 off on the digit counts. Should be 185 and 208, respectively.

~~(10^8 )^23 = 10^8*23 =10^160+24 =10^184~~

~~(10^9 )^23 = 10^9*23 =10^180+27 =10^207~~

Edit: Nevermind, i forgot the first digit

Yes, but the exponent just shows the number of zeros. It doesn't include the 1. Example: 10^3 has 4 digits.

Take your fancy talk and git outta here. We's talkin math, not sum kind o new fandangled language.

BUt did you do it in your head?

[deleted]

How do you use Fermat's Little Theorem for non-integers?

Carefully. Very carefully.

There's another "human calculator" in the US. They found out he uses the portion of his brain normally used for reflexes and motor control to do math calculations.

This is the man you're talking about: http://thehumancalculator.com/video/ He was on Stan Lee's Superhumans when they did a brain scan while he did math and figured that out. Pretty neat stuff!

does he still have reflexes

Through 4chan.

"In 2015, at /r/atheism, she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit Mountain Dew promotional code; she answered in 50 seconds. Her answer -- 546,372,891 -- was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special fedora had to be worn to perform such a large calculation.[14]"

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Using log tables I reckon.

[deleted]

The given number doesn't end in a zero. Note that you have to scroll right to see the whole thing.

Seriously http://imgur.com/fSqYcEf

the human brain is a computer running on an outdated OS? I'm sure if we figured the brain out you could download Smart 2.0.

Because there are rules in multiplication and division. For example, multiples of 5 can only end in 0 or 5. Multiples of 2 can never end in an odd number. Numbers that are multiples of 3, must have all their singular digits add up to a multiple of 3. A number is divisible by 4 if the last two digits are "00" or if the last two numbers are a multiple of 4 when not added together. There are a lot of rules for this. She probably mastered them all.

She started looking for multiplication patterns in the last sets of digits to the far right and started removing root-numbers that would not fit the pattern.

Autistic savant?

There was a British documentary about someone who is a mental calculator. For what its worth, I believe that they found that the part of his brain that he uses to do the calculations is linked to the vision center, a part of your brain that is constantly processing lots of information very rapidly.

Vedic Maths FTW! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_mathematics

Modular arithmetic, more specifically modular exponentiation. She was not trying to find the root of the entire number, just trying to find the root of the last part of it.

The first few digits of a number do not affect the last few digits of the answer when you raise it to a power. For example, 871 ^ 2 = 758641, 9871 ^ 2 = 97436641, 99871 = 9974216641, and 19871 ^ 2 = 394856641. Notice that they all end with 641 and the last three all end with 6641. Adding or changing digits on the front will never change the last digits. The formal version of this relationship is derived and explained on the Wikipedia page on modular exponentiation.

The number above ends in a 1. That means that its 21st root must end in a 1, 3, 7, or 9 because only the last digit of a number affects the last digit of the answer under exponentiation and 1, 3, 7, and 9 are the only numbers which can yield an answer ending with a 1 under exponentiation. There are a large number of similar tricks

The other people are also right. She probably memorized huge tables of multiplication and powers. She's also probably very fast with calculations in general and must be very careful to not make mistakes. She's good. However, the interesting thing here is the mathematics that would allow anyone to do this same calculation, not any special skill she has. It would take you an afternoon or two to learn this technique and, while you couldn't find the root in your head in fifty seconds, you could find it on paper in ten minutes.

Knowing the tricks takes this performance from superhuman to merely very impressive.

I assume first that it is an integer, then I'd do pattern analyzing. For a simple case, try finding the fourth root of a smaller number like 152,587,890,625. That is still a massive number, but I can break it down.

First, it has 12 digits. To be the fourth root, our answer is probably between 100 and 1000 (100^4 = 9 digits, 1000^4 = 13 digits).

Next, we look at the first three digits on the right. 625. We know for a fact that the number we are looking for ends with a five, so the format we are looking for is XX5.

Furthermore, we can tell it is likely a power of five, give that 0,625 is a very frequent chain in powers of five (25 happens all the time, 125 and 625 alternate, then the next digit goes 3/5/8/0).

Given that we think it is a power of five between 100 and 999, it is either 125 or 625. However, it is somewhat simple to show that 125 is not large enough, as 100^4 is not large enough (100,000,000). Therefore a reasonable guess would be 625, confirmed by calculating it out.

I'd use a similar process on that question. First, find the approximate range of the number you are looking for then look for common patterns. It is still an extraordinary achievement, but that is likely how it was done. Without looking at the answer myself, I'd guess it is a factor of 3 roughly around 400-600 million. Maybe something like 3^2 or 3^3 times a large prime.

What's extraordinary is that this was done quickly and correctly, a feat that likely required knowing 1000s of patterns and quickly using mental math to narrow down guesses. Even if you knew the exact process she used to reach her conclusion, it is virtually impossible to duplicate that speed.

In ancient times, aliens set up outposts on the subcontinent; they waged wars, and probably interbred with the humans who lived there; some of their genes pop up from time to time.... ;)

Well, a rough estimate could be done in seconds fairly easily. Powers of 10 tell you the numbers of zeros after the 1, i.e., 10^1 = 10 (2 digits), 10^2 = 100 (3 digits), etc. So to get 201 digits you'd want 10^201. That is the minimum 201 digit, of course. Noting it starts with a 9 means it's going to be just shy of 10^202.

Now you want 23 factors, so you need to split 202 into 23 values, i.e., 202 = 23x. If you can't do division quickly, you can notice that if x = 10, then you'd have 230, so x is slightly less than 10. If x = 9 you'd be one less 23 from 230, meaning 207. At x = 8 you'd be another 23 lower at 184, so you know it's going to be slightly less than 8.

So your current estimate is slightly less than 10^8, but well above 10^7, meaning it will be of the form y * 10^7, where y^23 must be less than 10^18 since:

[y * 10^7 ] * [y * 10^7 ] * [y * 10^7 ] ... (23 times) = y^23 * 10^7*23 = y^23 * 10^184

Which is 10^18 shy of 10^202 and must be mad up by y^23. Doubling is generally easy as I already know 2^24 = 16.7 million from 24-bit colour, so 2^23 is half that, about 8.3 million, which is almost 10^7 and I need closer to 10^18. So 2 < y < 10. If we guess y = 4, 4^23 = 2^23 * 2^23 is about 8.3 million * 8.3 million, which is slightly less than 10 million * 10 millon, which is 10^7 * 10^7 = 10^14, which is still 10^4 shy of 10^18 we're trying to achieve. So 4 < y < 10. Double again, y = 8, 8^23 = 2^23 * 2^23 * 2^23, which is slightly less than 10^7 * 10^7 * 10^7 = 10^21. Now we've overshot by 10^3. So 4 < y < 8.

Given that 4 gives us 4 magnitudes too low and 8 give 3 magnitudes too high, and this is with aiming a little high (10^202 which is slightly higher than the number given to factor), I'd guess it somewhat below halfway between (due to the exponential rather than linear growth), so less than 6 (halfway between 4 and 8), so I'd start with y = 5.

Now my guess for the solution is 5 * 10^7.

Although I wrote all of the above out, I did it in my head in about 30 seconds. Now to do better than that, I don't see many shortcuts left, so I'm afraid it'd probably be minutes to get even an approximation of the next significant digit. Recognizing that the number will be in the tens of millions (8 digits), it would take a very long time to get more than the first few digits, and keeping track would get very difficult after this.

I'm amazed at her ability, but I can see at least how to get an engineering estimate quickly. (I'm an engineer so this is a useful skill for order of magnitude estimates.) I'd love to find out how she did the rest, unless it is one of these "I don't know" savant things where even she doesn't know.

She's the Asian Carol Vorderman

Lucky guess?

I saw a program once about a similar human-calculator-guy. They did a scan of his brain while performing ridiculously long multiplication problems, and they found that his brain was actually processing the information in the portion of the brain that is typically used for unconscious, reflexive eye movements. I'm not an expert in neuroscience or mathematics, but that really made a lot of sense to me. Obviously certain types of computations have to be calculated by the brain at lightning-fast rates to prevent too much latency in our sensory experience, and certainly processing the vast amounts of visual data in 3d space fits the bill.

It's super incomprehensible for normally-wired people, because the experience would be so deliberate and arduous using the normal processing centers of the brain. It is easier to imagine when you realize the immense amount of data your non-genius brain is already capable of processing at lightning fast rates with literally no effort.

If you compound that innate ability with training, as described in coinclink's post, it seems downright feasible--but super inspiring!

She was recently confirmed of being a cylon

Her strategy was to simply put a dollar $ sign in front of the numbers. The rest just falls into place.

Source: I know some Indians.

The juice of sapho.

Really gives you a little glimpse at the true power of the human brain. I hope some time in the near future we will be able to unlock the true potential of our brains.

If you just calculate 10 ^ (201/23) you already get pretty close. The rest is "just" fine tuning by rules others already posted.

She's a Vulcan.

Just.... How...

It's not technology, it's Magic^TM.

Search for a TED talk by Arthur Benjamin. Towards the end, he multiplies two large numbers in his head and thinks out loud. That'll give you a sense of how they calculate these things.

I know how: it didn't happen.

Just to answer your question, Vedic Mathematics. You can numerous formula to do such calculation.

Something something Indian and accountant joke.

It's ok, I'm Indian.

In situations like this I am more likely to suspect fraud than brilliance. It isn't that I am a pessimist, it is just probability. They also said Jesus rose from the dead, and that some 4 year old girl gave birth. These things might be true, but again, i'll choose the probable answer until proven definitively otherwise.

You believe only one person out of 7 billion solving this math problem in their head, is not a small probability? The world isn't going to cave to your personal needs for proof and come mail you a letter for everything you want proved. If you did not read the article then that is your own fault.

Where did your logic even come from?

I don't think you really understand probability, or how numbers work. Specifically I don't think you appreciate how difficult this problem is. More importantly she apparently solved the problem in about the time it would take a normal person to remember all of the digits of the solution if they had known it before. It is more likely she knew the problem before hand than she is a human gifted with one in a universe, nay multiverse, set of math skills.

Math is a lot simpler than what you think it is, honey.

Do some research for yourself for once

Here is some more

Educate yourself.

The article clearly states that a team of people had to create a program to be able to solve the problem. If you think that she ALONE did that, instead of simply solving the problem, then you are fucking stupid.

Well, you don't get called Mental Calculator just because it sounds cool.

Also, Indian parents.

She uses an intel i8 quad core, thats how!

The problem is actually much simpler than it appears at first glance if you memorise a logarithmic table, which was not unheard of in the days before electronic calculators.

You are trying to find x^(1/23)

Take log, and you get log(x^(1/23)) = (1/23) * log(x), using log(a^(b)) = b * log(a)

Let's say your number is 55745.... followed by 196 more numbers.

Since log(a * b) = log(a) + log(b),

you have log(5.5745 * 10^(200)) = log(5.5745) + log(10^(200)) = 0.7462 + 200 = 200.7462

So now all you have to compute is

(1/23) * (0.7462 + 200) = 0.043478 * 200.7462 = 8.728

Note that the above line contains all the calculations involved. The rest is just manipulation and looking up the table.

Apply the inverse log, and you get 10^8.728 = 10^8 * 10^0.728

The first part is simple, the second part you can look up in a table.

EDIT: A brief history of log tables

Log tables were essentially the calculators of the past since they simplified complex calculations.

A general rule of calculations is that addition and subtraction is simple, multiplication and division more difficult, and exponentiation (raising to a power) more difficult still.

The "power" of log tables was that it reduced exponentiaton to multiplication and multiplication to addition.

So let's say I was an engineer from 1900, and I wanted to calculate 6.33545 * 7.434324.

I would look up a log table to get log(6.33545) = 0.802 and log(7.434324) = 0.871. Add them together to get 1.673.

Next, look up an inverse log table to get 10^0.673 = 4.71. Finally multiply by 10 to get the final answer.

If I had gotten 2.673 instead, I would still look up 0.673 in the table but then multiply by 100.

Notice that in the above example, I got around doing multiplication by looking up some numbers in a table and then doing some addition. Similarly, with a log table, you can get around doing exponentiation by doing multiplication.

So obviously log tables were very useful before the age of computers, and some people simply committed it to memory to save the trouble of having to look up the numbers everytime. Hans Bethe is a notable example.

I glossed over some details but you can find a good step-by-step explanation of how to use a log table here.

I attempted to use this method (obviously using calculators), but there are a couple of problems with it. Using 4 decimals gave me a 23rd root of approximately 546 372 666, which is 225 away from the correct answer, 546 372 891. Since you're effectively looking for 9 significant digits, using 9 significant digits in the original should be enough, and indeed this turns out the answer. Your method does reduce the problem to calculating three things:

  • log(9.16748676)
  • 200.962250291/23
  • 10^0.737489143

I still don't see how it's possible to do these calculations in your head. I mean rough approximations get you fairly close to the answer, but it's not really enough. To keep the error margin low enough that you can round the final result to an integer, you need to do estimations with 9 significant digits all the way through.

yea, even simplifying it to this method, who can do this in 50 seconds in their head...? lol

Shakuntala Devi

Technically no one. She died a couple of years back.

R.I.P.

Math. Not even once.

This is why I dont do maths. I failed in maths and see I am still alive.

There are other people like her that can do these calculations

Who? This is extremely rare. I think Kim Peek could do these kinds of things, he's dead now as well.

Daniel Tammet and Scott Flansburg for instance

No, there are others.

TIL of Shakuna Matata, a mental grill computer, when they asked her what 210 + 210 was, the answer was so dank that her head exploded and she became Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

/r/circlejerk

It's like he wasn't even paying attention

xD your comment was way more awesome than that which got 2 golds up there...

Well, not anymore...

That Shakuntala Devi's name? Albert Einstien.

Albert Einstein was bad at math...

I read somewhere that she was like a mental calculator!

Shak Deisel

Dude.... just .... Okaaay?

LOL made me spit out of my coffee.

Who's that? Sounds familiar.

Sounds like a fantasy league trophy name

Hahahahahahahahaha

Bless you.

Willem Klein, I guess. He calculated the 73rd root of a 500-digit number in 2 minutes and 43 seconds. He used to work as a computer at CERN.

The guy who made it out of Cube alive.

It likely isn't the way it is done. Knowing the last digit of N, you can eliminate certain choices of the last digit of n as your root. I.E. if the last number of N is a 5 then n ends in 5. If the last digit of N is 1, then the last digit of n is either 1,3,7, or 9. It comes down to memorizing a bunch of cyclic groups and then computing how they work together.

It's not memorizing cyclic groups. 23rd powers actually have a 1 to 1 correspondence between the last digit and the last digit of the answer.

What you're basically saying is that 7 to any power has to end in 7, 9, 3, or 1. However, we know that we're using 23rd powers. So we know that 7 to the 23rd will always end in a 3 because 3 is the 23rd number in that cycle. It just happens to work out that for each of the 10 possible digits the number can end in, you get a different digit in your answer.

So that's 1 less digit you have to memorize. You can cut it down much further with other tricks. You don't have to memorize the first 8 digits either. You can always trivially calculate/estimate the 8th digit using the first 7, ad how close the given number is to the number you memorized.

I posted a solution in response to some other comment, but in realty you only have to memorize about 1000-2000 numbers to be able to do this in under a minute.

http://imgur.com/1zef6zN

To obtain the last digits, if you know that the answer is an integer, it is not that hard (it is way easier to find the root, than to compute the 201 digits number from the root): it ends by a 1, so the root is odd. A quick check tell us that 3^23 ends up with a 7, 5^23 by a 5 and 9^23 by a 9, so the only possible last digit is 1. From there, the last two digits of (a1)^23 are congruent to 23 * 10a+1, so a is such that 3a is congruent to 7 mod 10, ie a=9. By doing that repeatedly, you can obtain the answer quite quickly.

"quick check".

"quite quickly".

This is like when a professor is writing a proof, jumps 12 steps while saying "it follows that..."

The intermediate steps are left as an exercise for the reader.

I felt everything was easily and precisely explained. Of course 50 seconds is insane, but did they really need to write a special program to solve this? Also, are you people just trying to be funny by saying you don't think this was done in an easy to follow manner?

The thing is that most of the answers is multistep solutions combining logarithmic tables and several approximations that takes for the average person to read and understand. Quickly identifying the correct tools and being to use them on the fly is making you a good mathematician. Being able to do so without any calculator, pen or paper is somewhat impressive. Being able to do so in a Quick efficient manner is very impressive, doing it with multiple methods for absurdly huge numbers that many common calculators can't exist you with is almost insane.

ones digit of multiples of:

9's -> 9 1 9 1 9 1 ... 23rd element is 9

7's -> 7 9 3 1 7 9 3 1 ... 23rd element is 3

5's -> 5 5 5 5 ... 23rd element is 5

3's -> 3 9 7 1 3 9 7 1 ... 23rd element is 7

1's -> 1 1 1 1 ... 23rd element is 1

Makes sense now. They specifically chose 23rd root because it makes the question easier than other numbers that sound equally difficult to a laymen

It's actually very easy. the powers of 3 cycle in 3,9,7 and 1. take 23 mod 4 and you get it. the powers of 5 always end in 5. the powers of 9 end in 9 and 1 so you just take 23 mod 2.

That picture about drawing an owl.jpg

Most people don't know that much about math because they don't need to. Even your simple answers are like wizard level shit. I appreciate it though, thanks.

Yup. The last digit can't be even, because the product ends in "1". It can't be 5, because all powers of something ending in 5 end in 5.

It might be 1, because all powers of something ending in 1 end in 1.
Stuff ending in 3 goes 3-9-7-1 in that sequence. Something ending in 3 raised to the power 23 would therefore end in 7. So the root can't end in 3.

Similarly, 7 goes 7-9-3-1, so the root can't end in 7 for the same reason.

And 9 goes 9-1, so the root can't end in 9.

So it has to end in 1.

These sequences are things which can be worked out mentally in seconds, even assuming they weren't pre-known to someone who was likely to be asked a question like this.

So yes, a quick check.

Yes, there's a reason why the question is a 23rd root; it makes it a lot easier (strangely enough)!

That trick only works for certain roots; it works for 23 rd roots; other roots blurs the digits together; for example anything ending in 1 squared ends in 1, but so also does anything ending in 9. 23rd roots have property that all the 23rd powers give unique digits so you can work it from the right.

Wait, so she got to pick the radix?

There's certain stereotypical questions you give fast calculators. You want them to be actually able to do it in a reasonable time. Also if you're pitting one calculator against another you want to find the one that can do the biggest numbers the quickest; it will be a much more spectacular contest if you use certain roots.

Indeed, knowing that the answer is an integer is a big help.

A integral root of an integer is either an integer or irrational -- and we have no better way to express irrationals than "the twenty-third root of..."

Quizzes and puzzles never ask you a question if you cannot give an answer. If the possible answers are "3" or "it cannot be answered", it's 3.

The answer could obviously also be asked to a given number of significant figures in the case of an irrational.

You can even find all the last digits directly, by using the same principle as RSA.

Since 23 x 87 = 1 (mod 100), just raising the last 3 digits to the power 87 will give you the last 3 digits of the number.

In Python:

>>> pow(771, 87, 1000)
891

So it's easy to find the correct solution from rabbitlion's approximation! You can compute an 87th power in just a dozen multiplications by using binary exponentiation.

Took me a bit to understand the last part, so a step-by-step for those who might be confused:

From there, the last two digits of (a1)^23 are congruent to 23 * 10a+1, so a is such that 3a is congruent to 7 mod 10, ie a=9. By doing that repeatedly, you can obtain the answer quite quickly.

Since the 201-digit number ends in a 1, we know that the 23rd root of the 201-digit number ends in 1, from the property of 23rd powers. The key to finding a, the second-to-last digit of the answer, is that:

(a1)^2 = a1 * a1 = (10 * a + 1) * (10 * a + 1) = 100 * a^2 + 2 * 10 * a + 1^2.

So to find the last two digits of (a1)^(2), we can throw away the 100 * a^2 term and see that it is the same as the last two digits of 2 * 10 * a + 1^2, or 2 * 10 * a + 1.

So to find the last two digits of (a1)^(x), where x is any positive integer above 2, note that

(a1)^x = (10 * a + 1)^x = ... higher order terms like 1000 * blabla + 100 * blabla + x * 10 * a * 1^(x-1) + 1^x.

and we can similarly throw away the 100 * blabla term and higher terms and see that it is the same as the last two digits of x * 10 * a + 1.

Just in case the above part is still be confusing, here's the whole thing (binomial theorem/expansion):

(a1)^x = (10 * a + 1)^x =

(10 * a)^x * 1^0 + (x choose 1) * (10 * a)^(x-1) * 1^1 + (x choose 2) * (10 * a)^(x-2) * 1^2 + ... + (x choose x-2) * (10 * a)^2 * 1^(x-2) + (x choose x-1) * (10 * a)^1 * 1^(x-1) + (x choose x) * (10 * a)^0 * 1^x =

higher order terms + 100 * blabla + x * 10 * a * 1^(x-1) + 1^x.

So now we know that the last two digits of (a1)^23 are the same as the last two digits of 23 * 10 * a + 1. Which is the same as saying that (a1)^23 mod 100 = (23 * 10 * a + 1) mod 100. We already know that the last digit of each is 1. We can go ahead and calculate that (23 * 10 * a + 1) mod 100 = (3 * 10 * a + 1) mod 100 since 20 * 10 * a > 100.

So then we have something like (plugging in 1, 2, 3, 4 for a):

(3 * 10 * 1 + 1) mod 100 = 31

(3 * 10 * 2 + 1) mod 100 = 61

(3 * 10 * 3 + 1) mod 100 = 91

(3 * 10 * 4 + 1) mod 100 = 21

etc.

We need something that gives us:

(3 * 10 * a + 1) mod 100 = 71, since that's what the last two digits of the 201-digit number are, and the only thing that gives us that is a = 9.

I haven't done the math beyond this to get the third-to-last digit, and I wonder if it isn't so easy anymore with this method. This method is made greatly easy by the fact that we're given a 1 for the last digit. If we have 2, we have this instead:

(a2)^23 = (10 * a + 2)^23 =

higher order terms + 100 * blabla + 23 * 10 * a * 2^(22) + 2^23.

Not as pretty. Similarly, let's keep the last digit as 1, say we've found that the second-to-last digit is 9, and we're trying to find the third digit. What can we say about 91^(23)? Hmm, I don't know. Or about (1000 * b + 91)^(23)?

I wonder if at some point in this process (of correcting for the approximation that's inherent in the log table memorization method), you have to go to the "plug in and check" method described here. I almost wonder if that "plug in and check" method may actually be better to rely on in general. This method breaks down/gets more cumbersome pretty quickly when the last digit doesn't turn out to be 1, in terms of the number of little calculations you have to do.

I will provide you with a 201 digit number and you can demonstrate doing this quite quickly perhaps?

With u/al_jebr below, yes I could probably (let say find the last 5 digits, which with u/sc2math's technique above would give the complete number). With my own technique, it would be a bit boring to do 5 digits. Edit: obviously not in 50s, but I believe I could do it in a few minutes.

If that is the case that is fantastic. I don't think I could confirm a number had 201 digits in 50 seconds.

But actually, I would only focus on the last 5 digits on the 201-digits number, as they should be sufficient to find the last 5 digits of the root.

I can't read a 200 digit that quickly

[removed]

... because his brain memorized something. Sure, he might not have known how he did it, but it wasn't magic.

Agreed, but if she has memorized some log tables PLUS has a gargantuan intellect highly specialized in mental calculations then things become clearer. I know that for example G65 - Grahams number - they probably will never figure out the entire string of numbers (needs more bytes then the entire universe can supply, probably even if you had total amount of particles in the universe ^ -||- amount of bytes) but they do know the last 500 due to patterns in how 3's multiply.

So she has a lot of those patterns in her head, as stated above, and can see what the last ~50 digits are up to and probably can rule out a lot of products. Even us laymen can see that the last digit is not an even number - doesn't get you to "...1". So that's half right there... or something.

What if we used bits with a higher base than 2?

Agreed, this is still insanely fast, even if you are able to calculate that in your head, which is dubious at least.

She probably had the log table memorized to a ridiculous degree and knew how to use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqbXPfaN_VM

You can use pretty basic number theory to simplify the calculation of the last few digits. e.g., you can compute the last x digits of any number raised to the power y without computing the whole thing.

Me too, I tried to do the calculations in my head and I got 1234 Potato

Also this is assuming the correct is an integer.

I think that was a given from the start.

You can get closer with things like knowing that powers of numbers that end in 5 all also end in 5.

My completely speculative guess is that she memorised a logarithmic table, so that she just pulls part 1 and 3 from memory. As I explained in my earlier comment, this was not unheard of. Part 2 is just division, albeit a fairly difficult one.

This method gets you close to the answer; an error of 225 puts you within .00001% of the real answer.

From that point, you do a binary search. Raise your estimate to the 23rd power (this can also be simplified), and if it is too low, add 512 to your estimate; if it's still too low add another 512, if it's too high subtract 256. Continue this process until you reach your answer. You can also use the relative distances of your "high" estimate and "low" estimate from your target to guess where between the two the real answer will be, to converge more quickly. Most of the time you won't need to check many numbers at all (in this case, around 8.)

Still a very impressive feat! But it's also neat to know how much seemingly intractable problems like this can be simplified.

Doing eight 23rd powers in your head in 50 seconds seems... challenging...

Definitely. It's still incredibility impressive; my only point was to explain how she may have made it easier. Doing it in your head 8 times is difficult, but it's much easier than doing it 555000000 times

When you get close enough to the number (like 225 away from the right answer), you can just start multiplying.

I think it's more likely she probably knew 50,000,000^2 and worked from there maybe.

http://i.imgur.com/jca3Z9Z.gifv

Thank you.

So far my biggest laugh of the day.

I've never seen that gif.

you might enjoy this one too

courtesy of /u/TheLandor

That man is really pretty.

Why would you link the gif version on gfycat?

This is much better.

sorry, I did not notice it was gif version, I just copied link that TheLandor used

The gif isn't very well optimized so it's rather large unfortunately.

maestro himself! great gif ;)

It's easier to read the text for the first time while the gif is loading.

WWWHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY

I miss Keenan and Kel

Same here buddy but this gif is from GoodBurgers.

i havent seen it in such a long time

hall of fame gif right there happy to see it again, nailed it

Glad you like it!

Imgr link isn't working for me, what was it?

It got me too.

Double the karma and gold for responding with an animated .gif to an incredibly-detailed and insightful post? Definitely on Reddit. :)

(Congrats on the gold, though! Just messing with you.)

Most of us understand and relate to the gif far better than the comment to which it was a response.

Oh I definitely get the joke. I laughed, too.

Haha yeah, I love the camaraderie on reddit. We can all come together and compliment each other on dank memes. Haha, we bond over means. Upmemes to you my memetastic friend :3

I thought that "dank memes" was an adjective?

Dank is an adjective. Memes is a noun.

Separately, yes. But some seem to use the phrase as an adjective. Or is it like "the bee's knees" in which case it's just idiomatic.

Ahh man, I don't know tbh.

Laughed so hard at this. Thank you!

Laughed out loud. Nice gif.

Whatchu know about the leafy bug, sissy?

I'm giggling my ass off covering my mouth at work right now...absolutely perfect.

There will never be a better use. Might as well send this one over to /r/retiredgif

Edit: okay. No its not ready to be retired. It had to be so appropriate is absurd.

I dunno, this gif is pretty applicable to a lot of situations, I like having it on hand.

I've always wondered, how do you giffers keep these 'on hand'? As in how/where do you have them saved? Teach me thy ways.

The hard part is to know if it was a retired gif

It is against the etiquette using a retired gif, you may even be banned from posting a gif ever again, so you have to be extra careful

Some people on imageboards have folders with thousands of pictures and then subfolders for specific theme for example.

I'd say its /r/DamnNearRetiredGif

/r/backfromretirementgif

I have yet to see it as applicable as this.

[deleted]

That subreddit gets spammed way too much...

That is not eligible for /r/retiredgif.

Usually the gifs are only retired when the content is so directly applicable it's absurd. If this was somehow changed into a writing prompt where someone explained it to Eddy Murphy I think that would be more in the spirit of the sub. In this case it just seems to be an incredibly apropos use of a Gif, borderline retire-able, but just not there yet.

It was used today on the Super Mario WR video for near enough the same thing. Just because it's been used appropriately doesn't mean it should be retired. How is Eddie Murphy represented in the post?

Pull your head out of your ass La Fleur.

Retired gifs have to be directly related to the post. Like if he had said "this math is so easy Eddie Murphy could do it" then you would be on to something.

It is still a great application of the gif.

Beautiful! /u/changetip /u/sc2math $2.00

/u/sc2math, Atlas_84 wants to send you a Bitcoin tip for 8,536 bits ($2.00). Follow me to collect it.

ChangeTip info | ChangeTip video | /r/Bitcoin

Seriously this is my favorite reddit post ever.

Would give you gold if I weren't broke.

Haha, my reaction exactly

U have been subscribed to math facts

That is such an incredibly useful gif.

whats this from? he looks older

Rofl Sir! Have AN Up Vote.

It's sad to me this has more up votes than the above comment...

Why is it sad? I would guess most people would have felt similar after reading /u/sc2math's thorough breakdown of the problem. I know I did. That gif perfectly summed up how I felt reading through it.

I agree, it wasn't simple and certainly confused me to a point but it seems like the comment was very high effort and high quality while the other just posted an appropriate gif. I'm not hating on the gif, I up voted it. I'm just saying that the explanation deserves just as many up votes if not more.

They hate us cause they anus.

reddit is a shittier version of high school sometimes.

Here's (1/2) Gold for you: /u/changetip /u/ThouArtNaught $2.00

The Bitcoin tip for 8,524 bits ($2.00) has been collected by thouartnaught.

ChangeTip info | ChangeTip video | /r/Bitcoin

ahahhahha you're so sad

Better fuckin be Eddie murphy

Ill have you know, I've never upvoted a comment before. You just earned p.impunity version of gold.

Your name isn't pimp unity? That's disappointing. I've always felt pimps need to learn to stand strong together.

Keep the hands firm!

wow so funny and original, thank god reddit is filled with people like you who repost these HILARIOUS meme images over and over again!

The sarcastic comments bitching about reposts aren't very original either.

the last inverse log i witnessed was a german video on motherless.

inverse log

I tried searching for an inverse log sex position on google, so i typed "inverse log sex" and google: "Did you mean: inverse log x?"

God damn google is a prude

I'm not so sure it is a "sex position" but more a term that sounds about right for videos where someone takes a poopy in another persons butthole.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Sometimes I wake up thinking I'm a fish.

link please

At work right now. I imagine some simple search terms along the lines of "shitting in pussy" will eventually lead you to the promise land.

I'm so much more ok with our beer stereotype ;_;

Why do you get to ignore the other ~~187~~ 196 digits? If we're looking for an exact root, is that much rounding really ok? Otherwise that makes sense.

EDIT: Wrote 187 instead of 196. and a word.

Well, if you know it's an interger you just have to look for numbers that are near your estimate.

The thing to remember, the 23rd power of something is going to be a huge number, 3^23 = 9.4143E+10 4^23 = 7.0369E+13, 5^23 = 1.1921E+16 - since you have an integer answer - you just have to find an estimate close to an int.

I suppose it might be irrational, but then it would have to some nth root with n < 23 of some integer in order to have an integer final solution be an integer.

But n would have to divide 23 and 23 is prime, so the 23rd root must be an integer.

Heh, I hadn't thought of that.

In general, the number is irrational (see sqrt(2)), so you have to stop somewhere anyway. If you want a more accurate answer just use more decimal places in the computation.

But how would the women then be able to provide an answer?

Yer a wizard, Devi.

Because they only need so much accuracy. Do you type out trillions of digits for Pi r^2 or just use 3-9 digits.

well if you don't care about getting the right answer...

That's a different kind of question because it is dependant on the relevance of the answer. Quiz questions are per se practically irrelevant.

A quiz show would address sig figs for that exact reason though.

That's my point though. Even though it's insanely impressive, it's still way less impressive than what the OP's title claimed then. If her answer is applicable to any 201-digit number starting with 55745.

Are you saying a 201 digit integer is somehow irrational?

That's how logs work though.

He moved the decimal over 200 places, and re-wrote it as

log(5.5745 * 10^200)

hence his explanation of

Since log(a * b) = log(a) + log(b),

Which means log(5.5745 * 10^200) = log(5.5745) + log(10^200)

log(10^200) simplifies to just 200

He didn't exactly ignore the other digits, he recognized them and treated them as trivial. They weren't all exactly trivial, but since we know we're looking for a whole number, once he uses enough of the numbers to see that the answer is only moving in the tenth's place, he can tell what the answer is going to be.

He needed less than 5 more of the 196 remaining numbers to get to this point, so we know that for the purposes of this exercise, at least 95% of the number was garbage information, only there to distract you. If they had used a non-integer answer, slightly more of the exact numbers would have been needed, but only enough to find one decimal place more than their answer required.

5 digits is enough for a lot of applications. If you need more you'd ignore fewer.

http://i.imgur.com/gL45334.gif

Exactly.

I need that to be made into this.

That's freaking creepy. I thought it was a still-frame

Dude thats freaky as hell

Yeah like now its fuckin 2+2

Not much harder, just add in multiplication and division.

What's incredible is that devi had no formal math education. No one ever taught her what logs are

Actually, that might have been what led her to be able to make the calculation. Research suggests people naturally count in logarithms before formal math education.

wow, interesting read

Logarithmic growth is a very natural progression. It occurs in music, economics, disease spread, genomes and so on. The natural logarithm is even far more interesting too.

Much of our sensing/neural processing also appears to be inherently logarithmic, e.g., vision, hearing, etc. A major reason for that is that logarithmic sensing enables scale-invariance. It's a very robust way of sensing, i.e., changes in scale due to changes in the environment (temperature, pressure, etc.) have a negligible effect on your ability to sense.

Logarithmic thinking likely rewires your brain differently from sequential thinking. Is there a way to unlearn conventional math education?

Is there a way to unlearn conventional math education?

Alcohol?

logarithmic sensing enables scale-invariance.

Can you explain this?

As an example, since log(a * f) = log(a) + log(f), you could apply the nonlinear map log(a * f) and eliminate "a" and isolate "f" through filtering, e.g.,

  1. g(x,t) = a(x(t)) * f(t)

  2. log(g) = log(a) + log(f)

  3. high_pass_filter( log(g) ) ~ high_pass_filter( log(f) )

  4. exp(high_pass_filter(log(g))) ~ high_pass_filter( f )

where g(x,t) is the raw sensed measurement, the scale a(x(t)) is a function of parameter x(t) that slowly varies as a function of time t, multiplied by the desired signal f(t) whose bandwidth of interest is of a higher frequency. This is typical of many sensors whose scale / sensitivity, a(x(t)), depends on slowly varying local environmental factors, x(t), and the signal of interest is relatively fast, e.g., vision systems.

This simple process can be generalized further.

That's really interesting!

Of course, then she also did this problem "On 18 June 1980, she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers—7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779" which she managed in 28 seconds.

That can also be done with logs

log(a * b) = log(a) + log(b)

No idea if that's how she did it, but it uses a very similar technique to the root problem.

That just means we naturally have a sense for orders of magnitude.

For instance if I asked you to estimate if there were 10, 100, or 1000 people in a crowd of 500 you would be able to tell me instantly....more than 100 but less than 1000.

But if I asked you if there were 400,500,600 you would have a harder time.

This article is making me shit my pants. Math interests me a lot, and this is just cray.

I would rather say that it's the algebraic mean between 1 and 9. I've never heard it referred to as being logarithmically in between.

I'm sure she knows what they are. No matter how fast her brain works it still needs a route to find the answer. It isn't like shes just pulling the answer out of thin air.

exactly. She must have invented logs and other math concept most people need to be taught on her own, most likely without realizing it, because it's intuitive to her.

she probably got her hands on some math books and was self taught. you should read about the mathematician ramanujan, that was basically his story.

Ren and Stimpy taught me about logs.

I dislike how people use the lack of a "formal" or higher level education as a way to either discredit or accentuate someone's knowledge. When an employer hires someone with a degree, they're not hiring them for a piece of paper and 40k in debt, but rather a set of skills and knowledge that the paper says they likely have and can use. It's not impossible to gain these skills and posess said knowledge through personal study and hobby work, or other means. It's obviously easier most of the time to learn esoteric material at a higher level educational institution, but at the same time not impossible to learn medieval European history in your attic with encyclopedias.

You're misunderstanding. I'm not saying she didn't attend formal higher education. I'm saying she didn't have ANY formal education, period. Most people in the west build a base of understanding in middle school and high school, on which they can expand either through higher education or self study if they so choose.

Devi on the other hand, grew up in rural India and didn't attend school at all as a child. If you read the article, it says she was working with her father at a circus when they discovered her abilities at age six.

I 100% agree with your point that university is not for everyone and you could get a comparable education on your own. The reason I think Devi is incredible is because nothing, not a classroom or a book taught her how to do this. She didn't self study how to do mental math, it's an inborn ability that's intuitive to her.

If she is indeed using logs like OP suggests, then it means she interdependently invented logs on her own, most likely without using it, because it's intuitive to her. You have to admit, that's impressive.

What?

Basically, if you can't work out the 23rd root of 16748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771 using this method you have the mental capacity of a brick, it's that easy.

Brick with a degree in math here.

They don't teach you numbers in calculus class here. All I see is F's, G's and x's

If you studied harder you could get that F up to a D. Derive all the functions.

Or just F THE D instead, probably get you further in life anyway.

can't forget u and v

And the entirety of the Greek alphabet.

Now I know my α, β, γ... next time won't you derive with me?

You should have studied (and mastered) log tables by grade 9.

No one does log tables in the age of calculators.

Blonde, brunette, redhead..

Something, something X. Fuck Jenny

Quite a few y's these days as well I hear.

If you had a degree in math you'd realize that arithmetic =/ math. As a mathematical physicist, I work with numbers less often than a journalist.

What is it you work with then? What is math if not numbers? Not trying to be a smart ass I'm just very ignorant on the subject

Functions mostly. A simple one I used yesterday:

f''(t) = a

f'(t) = v + a*t

f(t) = 0.5*1t +vt + p

A function and its two derivatives that gives you the change in position of an object with known velosity(could be 0) and previous position, when applied random accelaration over a period of time. This is how i'm calculating the change of positions in a game in a school project.

Functions and mathematical operations and operators on functions. I literally haven't written a number in my own work for longer than I can remember. (Besides something like x^(2).)

Surely any maths student has done number theory and challenged themselves not to use a calculator?

In that case, all you need to know is that for every real number x >= 0 and every natural number n there is exactly one real number y >= 0 s.th. y^n = x.

Taking my math minor right now. Pretty sure after calculus 2 you stop using numbers.

Please explain why Division by zero is not zero.

Okay. Division is, to put it in elementary school terms, taking a number of things and dividing evenly it into a number of containers, and reporting on how full each container is. That's where the remainder idea comes from when you're working with whole numbers. You've got 20 things, you're putting it into 7 containers, you'll have 2 in each with 6 left over. However once you get past that and you learn you can break the thing you're dividing into smaller parts, and since we're decimal here we'll break it into increasingly smaller increments of 10, your 6 left over becomes 60 tenths which get divided into the 7 containers with 8 tenths each, with the 4 tenths left over divided into 40 hundredths and distributed 5 times each, then 7 thousands, 1 ten thousands etc or 2.857142857142... written out like big boys and girls do.

So with that understanding in mind here's your problem. I'm going to give you 20 things and I want you to divide it among 0 containers. And no remainders, I want the decimal answer. Go.

Do you see the problem? You can't even get started. No matter what you do you have no place to put the things you're trying to divide up. So you're stuck. No answer, invalid question.

Extended answer in the comment below this one.

Extended comment to the above. If you're satisfied with the answer above then stop here. Because here's the part where I try to blow your mind, and you didn't even ask for that.

You know how when you were first learning the number line you were shown:

0, 1, 2, 3, 4 -->

Like that with an arrow pointing to infinity? And you were shown addition on that number line (start on the first number and count towards the right the second number and where you land is the answer) and then you learned subtraction but you were told that if you ever try subtracting a bigger number from a smaller number you can't do it because you're going to fall off past the zero, so just ignore those question.

And then your number line got expanded with these strange things call negative numbers and looked like this:

<--- -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 -->

And suddenly you could do those problems you were told to ignore. You can subtract a larger number from a smaller number, the answer just goes negative. And your mind was blown. And then you got used to the idea.

Then you learned multiplication, and it happily fit on the new number line. And then you learned division and you were told that if you have leftovers to just stop because it didn't fit on the number line you were shown.

Then you were shown fractions and decimals, the numbers between numbers. And suddenly that number line had an infinite number of infinitely small spaces between each number where new numbers could reside, even numbers that never terminated, like the result of 20/7. And your mind was blown. And then you got used to the idea.

And then you learned about powers, repeated multiplication, and it happily fit on your new number line. Then you learned roots and you were told that if you were ever asked to take the even root (square root being the most common example) of an odd number to just ignore that answer and stop.

Then you learned about i. You were told that there was this imaginary number that was the square root of -1 and you could solve the problems you were told to ignore. And your mind was blown. And maybe you got used to the idea, maybe not.

For most of you this was the limit of your math experience. And what you didn't know was that ever so quietly your number line was once again expanded and it looked like this:

4i

3i

2i

1i

0 1 2 3 4 -->

-1i

-2i

-3i

-4i

Had to cut off the negative real numbers, but they're still there. So an answer that looks like 3+2i can be plotted on this number plain. That's one number composed of a real part and an imaginary part.

With imaginary numbers the number line has become a number plain and this is the realm of advanced mathematics and fractals and really cool stuff. There are cool things that happen to numbers on this plane. If you do mathematical operations with imaginary numbers they move around on this plane in 2 dimensions, sometimes in wild ways. Roots of polynomials form pretty shapes. And it messes with some mathematical operations like how do you determine which is greater, -3+3i or 3-3i? Tons of college level math happens on this number plane. It blows your mind, and eventually you get used to the idea. A little bit. Still blows my mind at times.

Still with me? Something's wrong with you, but okay, here's the part where I bring it back around. There is a 3rd dimension to the number line and it is the domain of X/0. Yes, divided by zero is, if you make it this far down the rabbit hole, a problem we can find the answer to. Kind of. Sort of. It's not as straight forward as imaginary numbers expanding into the 3rd dimension and plotting points. There's no shortcut symbol we substitute for 1/0 and call it all good. Answers aren't points but fields, areas where the answer can lie. This is a wild and untamed field of mathematics with limited apparent application so it has remained largely unexplored. It's the perfect place to look for a doctorate thesis, though, if you're interested in that sort of thing. Because as far as I know it's still blowing people's minds and no one has gotten used to the idea yet.

What a great answer. I will be using this one for when people ask.

http://i.imgur.com/jbigcKa.png

I should change my job description to Software Developer Brickgineer

No, no one's saying that it's just easier than it looks.

You and I have drastically different meanings of the word "simple"

I'd imagine that he means simple relative to the brain capacity of an "Indian mental calculator"

Yeah no kidding, I think the right words are "just very slightly less impossible"

I think he's just trying to feel smart

Well, relatively simple and probably similar to the method she used. The super computer probably did it the hard way.

The question is, how much dB simpler is this solution?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/d/8/2/d82ce9c9174bad8327e08e93491457ca.png

What?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/d/8/2/d82ce9c9174bad8327e08e93491457ca.png

wat

http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/d/8/2/d82ce9c9174bad8327e08e93491457ca.png

[deleted]

Yeah uh, he isn't feigning.

[deleted]

It's the purple kind.

Like sc2math upthread said — just logarithm operations.

I have no idea either but I could find two useful wikipedia articles in simple english: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponentiation

How old are you?

I'm assuming you either use math beyond very basic algebra routinely or you are still in school.

The whole "use it or lose it" thing is true. I'm a college educated, successful 25 year old and I don't remember how to go about performing the operations in that equation because I haven't had to do anything like that in almost a decade.

Yeah, I'm 32 and don't think I've ever eve seen anything like that. Then again, I made it through college only taking 2 math classes.

[deleted]

It's Algebra II. Here's a link to online classes for them if you are interested:

https://www.khanacademy.org/math/algebra2/logarithms-tutorial

I don't think it has anything to do with age but whether you learned it/about it or not. I am 28 and I have never even seen anything like that.

It's stuff you learn in high school.

No one who has been out of high school for more than a couple years, and doesn't need to use math at work, remembers anything about high school math.

That's probably true. It's funny how people fall over themselves to talk about how much they don't remember it or understand it though.

I don't remember much about the plot of Richard III, which I read with my class in the ninth grade. If I saw a discussion about that play here, I can't imagine my first reaction would be to post about how I don't remember anything about it, and how I don't understand Shakespearian English.

[deleted]

I'm sorry to hear that.

[deleted]

I deleted my comment above, because, yes you're right, it is a bit mean spirited. However, I do want to respond to you:

I get that not everyone knows everything, I am aware of the gaps in my own knowledge. I am totally totally on board with two kinds of attitudes when encountering something unknown:

  • "Hmm, I don't know this, but this is interesting, I want to know more", replies phrased like "can you help me understand this" or specific questions about the content fall into this - I spend a lot of time on /r/explainlikeimfive and /r/NoStupidQuestions helping educate exactly these kinds of thinkers

  • Hmm, I don't know this, but this isn't relevant to me, or I don't care enough, so I'll ignore it and move on - totally valid as well.

The attitude I have a problem with is the one that celebrates ignorance. "Hey I'm dumb and I'm cool attitude." Often responses like "What?", "Wut?", "Wat?", "I understand some of these words" etc are reflective of this and grate on me.

Anti-intellectualism at its finest.

[deleted]

The reaction is one of unwillingness to learn.

"Oh, this is too complicated for me. I'm going to play up how dumb I am instead of taking the minimal effort to understand it. LOOK GUYS. I DON'T KNOW SOMETHING. LOL RIGHT?"

Formula for brick. That's how bricks are calculated into existence.

Erm yeah ofc. If we have that log(a^b) = b·log(a) then of course.

Why is this not in my textbook... Would have saved me on my exam

I'm pretty sure it's in every highschool math textbook.

Here you go, a nifty formula with weird signs and such.

Logs. You have to learn them in algebra II in highschool.

I'm 21 years old. I'm a programmer. I did 2 years of Comp. Sci. in college.

I still don't know how the fuck logs work.

guys... Logarithms are just inverse exponents. Log base 9 of 81 is equal to 2 (since 9^2 = 81)

I'm on alienblue which apparently doesn't show carats. So your final statement showed 92=81... Which I'm pretty sure is not true. I know enough math to debunk that one.

Are you sure? How long did you go to college for?

Okay, tough guy. Prove it.

Sigh, I got this far into the thread wondering why none of the math was making sense

92=81

This equation works in hebrew, which is read right-to-left:

18 = 2 * 9

Ah. The Jews once again demonstrating that they know things that common men can never understand.

Reddit automatically turns carats into "super" html tags.

The 2 is a superscript. 9 squared.

HE SAID HE KNOWS ENOUGH MATH TO DEBUNK THAT ONE

edit: Upvoted for being a dick. Thanks, reddit!

oohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Dunno if you really want the answer, but here goes

Log-base a-of b=x is basically to be read as 'a to the power of x=b'

So you're asking a to the power of 'what' gives you b? So, log-base 10-of (100)=2, since 10 raised to the power of 2 is 100.

This brings back almost PTSD like memories from high school tests.

I understand the concept. But I can't break down a log into a series of smaller functions.

If I forget 9*8, I can instead do 9+9+9+9+9+9+9+9

If I can't remember what 8^3 is, I can do 888.

If I can't remember what 72/6 is, I can do long division.

If I can't remember what Log(47) is, well, fuck me.

Dunno if you really want the answer, but here goes

Log-base a-of b=x is basically to be read as a to the power of x=b

So you're asking a to the power of 'what' gives you b? So, log-base 10-of (100)=2, since 10 raised to the power of 2 is 100.

So in your question you're asking 10 (assuming base 10 log) to the power of what is 47? Or 10^x = 47.

I also know that. I can't write it out and figure out what it is. I still have no idea what the answer is. I would have to use a table or a calculator.

Ah. Same here.

You can estimate pretty easily though. You should know pretty much immediately Log(47) [assuming log base 10] will be less than 2 and larger than 1, because 10^1 is 10 and 10^2 is 100 and 47 is in between. It is the same exact process as 8^3 = 8*8*8.

Soooo... where would I go from there? There are a large amount of numbers between 1 and 2. How should I go about narrowing that down? 10^1.5, 10^1.7?

When I don't know what 713 x 567 is, I don't figure out 700x500 and 800x600 and try and narrow it down from there. I multiply the two out.

To get an exact answer you'd have to use a logarithm table. Logarithms are used for complex shit that simply can not be done in your head. But it is very easy to know what a logarithm actually is. That was my point.

I know, but I want to know how they're calculated. Give me the formula for them. My calculator most do SOMETHING to figure out random log like log(3840834.35235). If I had a pen and paper, I should be able to do it too.

Edit: I have the same grief with sin, cos, and tan function.

There is no easy method to do logarithms by hand. They involve the use of Taylor Series (calculus) and even then still require the lookup table. Computers actually perform logarithms by lookup table as well. Way back when before calculators were a thing, logarithm tables were a giant sheet of answers you had to spend 20 minutes looking at to compute it. You COULD do all the calculus to do it by hand but its absolutely tedious and pointless. Trig functions use Taylor Series (calculus) to get their answers as well. Nobody does these by hand. If you want to better understand trig functions then study the unit circle.

I do understand the trig functions through the use of the unit circle.

How did those giant sheets of answers come to be though? What is the fundamental, most basic, aspect of Log calculations?

You already know what the most basic aspect of log calculations are, its inverse exponents. It just happens to be fucking insane to calculate accurately. The table is made of pre-found answers that were done by tedious calculations carried out by top mathematicians so you wouldn't have to spend months doing them.

Basic idea is inverse exponents like I had said before.

Actual calculation (of non-trivial cases) requires calculus the level over the heads of most humans alive today.

Its a hard concept to imagine I guess, but mathematicians do very little arithmetic. Arithmetic (the branch of mathematics dealing with the properties and manipulation of numbers) is considered by most mathematicians to be trivial. When you get to the upper echelons of math, it isn't about finding the solution, it is about proving that a solution to a problem exists. The reason these tables existed is because mathematicians looked at the discovery of logarithms and how they can be used to do all sorts of magical calculations, and realized they're fucking insane to calculate. They realized very fast that calculating these by hand would be absolutely ridiculous every time, so a couple of guys who were working very closely with the discovery of the logarithm created this master table of solutions. You have to get over the idea that you should be able to do everything in mathematics by hand, it just isn't the case [well, you could, but it would just be an exercise in understanding. Otherwise you're just reinventing the wheel.]. It is just how the math world works; one day's mathematical breakthrough is the next day's homework exercise.

You can read more about the history of the logarithm here in this short 2 page article: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/346146/logarithm

I understand that. I want to know how for knowledge sake. I know the Taylor series and how that works too.

Overall, I just would like to know. An itch I would love to scratch.

I think they use a method of approximation, where you repeat a calculation over and over to arrive as close to the answer as your precision requires. That's why it's hard to do by hand (calculate a log). It's a form of infinite series I believe.

what's the log ^^^9 of 99?

log base 9 of 99 ~= 2.09132916932

since

9^2.09132916932 ~= 99

nice! Thanks

Roots are inverse exponents. ^(2)√81 = 9

Logs are black magic. Here, take 9 and 81. Now good luck finding what exponent you use to get there, as there is no simple set of steps for that.

It's just because you're more used to one than the other. ^(2)√81 looks easy because you have a bunch of square roots memorised. But if you want ^(2)√563, you bring out the calculator. However, ln(563) is no more complicated to calculate than ^(2)√563. Square roots are actually quite time-consuming to calculate. At high school, you never actually learn how to calculate a square-root, instead you basically memorise a bunch of squares, or you use your calculator. You really need a multiple step algorithm if you want to calculate it by hand, which is exactly the same as what you need for calculating a log.

I mean, for your example, the log is pretty simple too. Your first problem is ^(2)√81=x, and we know that x=9 because we have 9^(2)=81 memorised. For the log, it's log_9 (81) = x, which is another way of saying 9^(x)=81. Again, we know x=2 because we have memorised 9^(2)=81. They're really on the same level, it's just that square roots are more familiar, and thus seem less "scary".

http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/956776/whats-the-inverse-operation-of-exponents

no

Although it is not the top answer, one answer says that both are. Other answers mention roots, while some others mention logs. So I guess we're both right?

No.

Roots are the inverse to power functions, i.e. functions of the form x^n .

Logarithms are the inverse to exponential functions, i.e. functions of the form n^x .

Tantamount to how exponentiation is consecutive multiplication (which is consecutive addition), logs are consecutive division (which is just consecutive subtraction).

It was more no to "logs aren't inverse exponents"

which is what I thought you were insinuating. Like I'm a CS major too and I hate math too, but I always thought logs were a pretty simple concept..

I was, in fact insinuating it, to be honest. So thanks for correcting me, anyway.

Roots are the inverse of x^n = y. Logs are the inverse of n^x = y. They are fundamentally different.

[deleted]

Could be 2 years of general education and 2 years of computer science

The thing is, you can't get through comp Sci without understanding logs, as so many algorithms have their performance bound by log(n). Most likely he got to data structures (which can be a sophomore year class) and dropped out, which I think he was implying himself.

There is a difference in knowing how to use something and knowing how it works.

You have to understand logs to get through comp science. How are you going to use the math in a field where not everything is clear cut and all you do is plug in formulas if you don't understand it. The "math" taught in most public schools is nothing more than memorization, no thinking required.

When we're looking at something as low level as logs I don't think that's true. That trite statement only works when there are abstractions in place.

Completed science degree here. Never have even seen log(n).

Pro tip: Community colleges are horrible.

I wanna say you're getting scammed but at least CC is cheap.

lack of basic reading comprehension

redditor confirmed

... Two years of comp sci in college does not equal 2 years of college. That being said, Fox News may have an opening for you.

Ya but it means he probably flunked out or changed majors.

Wait what? Lol. You's trollin.

I've taken 2 years of accounting and I'm not in school to be an accountant. I've taken 2 years of auto shop and 2 years of Spanish and I didn't intend on either of those having a major role in my future. You have space to fill out some credits with electives. Taking a few semesters of comp sci, especially when in school for a stem degree, is nowhere near out of the question.

Also it's super elitist to act like that even if they did leave school. Snob.

If you told me you had taken 2 years of accounting in reference to not understanding math, I would assume that you can't handle the subject and quit for something easier.

That's a poor assumption. Math in accounting is rudimentary and nearly impossible to fuck up. I was a C student in algebra and I failed precalc but i have a. 4.0 in all my college accounting classes. I took accounting at night actually, so I was in class with a lot of ladies who worked at the local banks, and they actually looked to me to help. And again, I'm garbage at math. Also curiously I'm great at physics which is just applied precalc. Got an A in physics but an F in precalc. Go figure.

Also worth saying that changing paths might reflect that you found a new passion elsewhere, or decided that you didn't want to do your original major as work for the test of your life (even if you're decent at it) so you switched to something else. I think this happens a good amount.

Or that he realized that you can study on your own and still get employed. Experience is a greater demonstration of knowledge than a paper that shows what school you went is, in the CS industry.

Ohhhhh shit he brought up fox news! So original! Good one

Was trying to be relevant, not original. He may have been joking, but still, he rewrote the whole quote to fit what he was saying. That's a Fox thing to do.

Also in general making fun of people because they don't have as much school as you is elitist. But I suspect that he was joking more than anything, so I made my Fox News quip instead of trying to call him out.

It's just old to me I guess. I've not watched fox news or read an article from them in forever. It's really easy to do if you don't like them

Community college computer science... I don't even want to know

edit: so many mad Associates in here

I'm a multi-billionaire math professor and have been teaching math for 30 years and I won various math-related awards and I still don't know how logs work.

[deleted]

Burnin' down trees don't make you a lumberjack buddy

Dexter?

Dexter AKA BONGLORD420

Are you ok?
Do you sleep all night and work all day?

BONGLORD420 is on the case... at the crack of noon

He's a lumberjack and he's ok.

Because trees. I get it.

Ironically, what you have in common: you both wear suspenders, high heels, and a bra

I'm not sure I believe you. College professors don't make that much money.

You should consult a lumberjack.

Miley. Fucking. Cyrus.

If you're a multi-billionaire maths professor, you're either doing it very very wrong or very very right.

did you acquire your wealth by being a math professor, or is that more of a hobby?

My gf though a multi billionaire would be helicoptering into inaccessible snow places, skiing down them, to have their driver waiting at the bottom of the slope with a change of clothes ready to take them to an small field where their helicopter would be waiting to take them to their fuck-off huge yacht for dinner made by Blumenthal with a bunch of scantily clad hot bodies moving seductively around them as they ate.

I said they would be on reddit... I was right!

Well, log base ten is basically going to give you a whole number and some trailing decimals (if your number isn't a power of ten). You can predict the whole number part because it's the length of the original number minus one.

So, log(10) = 1

log(100) = 2

log(1000) = 3

Log(500) is between 2 and 3

The log of her number is 200.something because it's a 201 digit number.

logs are a way of writing astronomical numbers into shorter, more compact versions of the same numbers. They tell us the order of magnitude something has changed by. If a magnitude increases by exactly one, that means the new number is ten times bigger than the last one. If log(x) = 5.667, your number x would be the number 1 that has grown 10 times it's size roughly 5 times (1*10*10*10*10*10), so you can already know just by seeing the log that your number is already beyond 100,000 times the original. So, logs can find exponents that can be used in place of scientific notation which is convenient for things like growth and decay rates or star stuff.

That can be done like so:

Using the the value from the log: 1 x 10^5.667 = 10^5.667 ~= 464,515

Using scientific notation for the same number: 4.64515 x 10^5 = 464,515

Please note, logs are far more complex than this when you get into different bases (such as "e"), but I'm just trying to explain the easiest to understand base for most people and the one most people without an understanding of logs are likely to have been exposed to.

Logs are better than bad, they're good.

Edit: clarified a little bit.

That answer made a whole lot of difference more than "It's just a reverse exponent". It actually teaches something, rather than re-stating the dictionary definition.

Thank you. I had to play with them for some years before I was able to "visually" understand what was happening, I'm glad it helps.

Whatever he said.^

Don't worry, you can be a web developer!

Er...

About that... My SublimeText window right now: http://i.imgur.com/GpFzkwv.png

How the fuck do you do two years of Comp. Sci. and never encounter a logarithm?

You should really work on that. It'll save you some trouble someday. They're just the inverse of exponentiation.

Senior undergrad Immunology/Microbiology major... yep.

Apparently you didn't do very well.

I dropped out, but that was because I moved to another city. (It's not like in the US where people move into their universities).

I'll restart in a different university next year, though.

You should learn about the Big O sooner or later, understanding 'logs' there isn't fundamental, but it's going to help so much understanding certain concepts.

Not just that, but log2 and 2^x are both very important in a binary world, AKA computer science

You should still understand how logs work. Especially since most math is learned in the first two years.

The only math I learned in college was Discrete Maths.

I had Calculus I, Vector Calculus and Linear Algebra. Doesn't mean I learned them, but I had them.

I still don't know how the fuck logs work.

you get this book with numbers in it that you accept are right and then add or subtract various 'logs' e.g 'sin', 'cos' and 'tan' respectively the sine, cosine and tangent of something

And by changing 'normal' numbers into 'logarithmic' numbers, you can do all sorts of difficult calculations using only simple mathematical functions to obtain crazy precise numbers of ... stuff

it works, brick here, don't ask me how!

Logarithms are reverse exponentiation. How can you be in CS and not understand them?

As you may (or may not) know, computers only do what they are told. Your algorithms must be shit if you don't understand how to deal with manipulation of large floating point numbers or decimals without rounding errors (computational complexity theory), and also time complexity. That's the point of the OP saying "[the] US Bureau of Standards [wrote] a special program ... to perform such a large calculation." They brute-forced it, which is usually never a good idea.

If you know the theory and can use log tables, the solution reduces to "simple" mental arithmetic. It's a parlor trick (by a very skilled mathematician, no doubt). Check out http://projecteuler.net for some other good computational challenges. On some of these, no amount of CPU cylces will crack them. It often takes a clever solution to solve.

For my money, Ramanujan is the #1 Indian mathematician.

It pushes the x down from the b... or something.

logs seemed to be an afterthought in all my education as well. Kinda tacked on the end of HS Calculus, Uni Maths. Then mentioned as kinda bonus questions in exams.
The kind of stuff I didn't ever commit to memory, therefore never needed to purge it either....

It's the inverse of a power function. So just like how division and multiplication by the same number would reverse each other (ie you'd get back your original number), so do powers and logs in the same base.

If A^x = Y, then Log(Y) = X

Note: the base of that log function should be A. I couldn't figure out how to do subscript

Addition/Subtraction
x + y = z.
What do we add to x to get z?
z - x = y.

Multiplication/Division
x * y = z what do we multiply x by to get z?
z / x = y.

Exponentiation/Logarithms
x^y = z
To what power do we raise x to get z?
log-base-x(z) = y. (If there is a way to subscript on reddit, someone please let me know)

What's the log2(256) = 8

log2(1024) = 10

log2(65536) = 16

Basically, log2(x) is how many bits do you need to hold a number. Now pretend you can have a fractional number of bits. log2(1000) = 9.9657 <- this number is calculated by tables. How does it work? Who cares.

What we know, is that logs have interesting properties (how do they work? I have no idea)

log(x*y) = log(x) + log(y)

log(x / y) = log(x) - log(y)

log(x \^ y) = y*log(x)

log(yth root of x) = log(x) / y

This works with ANY base. It could be 2, 10, e, etc.

So, what sc2math says is that if we apply the logarithm of the formula, we can simplify some operations. Then we exponentiate and ta-da!

But I think he misses the point that to do that ALL in your head, you'd need to be able to calculate logarithms and exponentiations all in your head, too. I'm pretty sure the mental calculator woman did something else entirely.

I did 4 years of compsci in university.

I wouldn't have made it past the second year if I wasn't able to figure out how logs work.

Your story sounds legit.

Logs are a series of files that tell you what is happening with a program. Usually a programmer will write out errors to logs so that they can then have the logs sent to them when a program crashes.

Well, I'm very familiar with this kind of log

Using Dreamweaver isn't programming

Thankfully, I never touched it. Take your assumptions elsewhere, please

Just use a computer.

That's pretty bad. In Comp Sci. you should just take the taylor series at least.

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I can't believe you seriously expect anyone to believe that.

no wonder i almost failed that class.

It's actually not that hard. With log base 10, it's essentially just the "number of zeros" in a number.

So for example log(1) = 0 log(10) = 1, log(100) = 2, log(1000) = 3, log(10,000) = 4 and so on. The trick is that it's ~~"spread out"~~ "smoothed out" so log(20) = 1.30102999... log(200) = 2.30102999

etc.

So for example the "stair step" function in the number of zeros looks like this, while the "smoothed out" function looks like this

It gets a little more complicated when you have logs of different bases, like log base 2, log base 2.718281828... and so on.

http://imgur.com/iZthbNg

Hmm. log(100) = 2

Otherwise your going to confuse everyone like Grot here

Yeah, it was a typo. I didn't even notice.

I only see two zeroes in 100, but you said log(100) is 3. And I have no idea what you mean by "spread out".

It was a typo. (fixed now)

By "spread out" I simply mean on a continuous range, instead of a "stair step" function

A "stair step" function in the number of zeros looks like this

while the "smoothed out" function looks like this

See the difference?

By spread out I think he means that the gaps between logs become smaller the higher the number.

Actually it means "no gaps" I probably should have said "smoothed out"

So for example log(1) = 0 log(10) = 1, log(100) = 3 and so on.

What?
log(1) = 0.
log(100) = 2.

Yeah, it was a typo sigh

log(100) = 3

nigga you missed a 0

It was a typo.

log(100) =2, not 3 :)

Hah! I must have hit the wrong key on my keyboard, and not noticed.

That can happen to anyone I guess. Have a nice day!

Not really, if you explain it properly it is quite intuitive. Trouble is it sounds silly if you don't make an example.

The base 'z' logarithm of 'x' gives you the exponent of a number in base z that is equal to x.

In mathematical terms: log z (x) = y <--> z^y = x

For example: log 10 (1000) = 3 <--> 10^3 = 1000

Logarithm in base 10 is so common it is usually just written lg (x). Similarly logarithm in base e (Euler's number, which is it's own derivative) is so common it is written ln (x), called the natural logarithm.

Err not usually, if f you are ahead you can get to logs but my algebra II class we did not get there at all.

Our teacher was horrible and we pretty much learned polynomial functions and matrices and that's about it.

Was really fucked at the start of this year with AP calc

So you base your "not usually" comment on your class that you admit was awful?

You're right. But I asked around a bit and none on my classmates that were behind a year learned it either, I think it just might be my shitty school

Sounds like the school to me. Did it offer anything after algebra 2?

Yes pre calc then AP calculus which I'm taking right now

A class being awful really has nothing to do with the subjects on the curriculum on a higher level. It may simply be that logs are not part of algebra II curriculums in some places. Same went for my school, and we had fine teachers and classes. Those things have no bearing on a designated, mandatory curriculum.

Algebra II honors covered logs but the normal class didn't. Why do I remember this...

Why do that, you can find all the logs you need in a forest.

I remember doing that but I have no idea what logs are or how they work. It was simply an act of memorizing symbols and patterns and formulas. That's what all higher math is to me and a lot of people.

Logs. You have to learn them in algebra II in highschool.

And you forget them pretty much as soon as you graduate, unless your job involves heavy math.

The neck beards are out in hordes today

I learned more about logs from that comment than in school.

I got them in 7th grade - and never saw them again until Big-O notation in CS

I drop them occasionally too.

http://i.imgur.com/ZOqj3kz.jpg

That is a sweet ass table

edit IT IS A GOD DAMN LOG TABLE

Where is the jpg for sweet ass-table?

it's called math

not even once

It's actually called maths.

I just dropped a log. In the toilet.

It was poop.

THE PROBLEM IS ACTUALLY MUCH SIMPLER THAN IT APPEARS AT FIRST GLANCE IF YOU MEMORISE LOG TABLES

https://i.imgur.com/DrXpLu5.gifv

To the other replies so far

They're making a fucking joke

[deleted]

True, just that the replies seemed so serious, as if the "what" comment was an actual question.

I don't think this was a "I get it but I'm going to play dumb as a joke, tee hee" comment. Dude really didn't get it (or at least get it enough to get the gist).

And being ignint is cool.

[deleted]

I didn't say it was a good joke.

Wow, making fun of the site you're a part of, that isn't overdone yet.

THE PROBLEM IS ACTUALLY MUCH SIMPLER THAN IT APPEARS AT FIRST GLANCE IF YOU MEMORISE LOG TABLES, WHICH WAS QUITE COMMON IN THE DAYS BEFORE CALCULATORS. YOU ARE TRYING TO FIND X1/23 TAKE LOG, AND YOU GET (1/23) * LOG(X) LET'S SAY YOUR NUMBER IS 55745.... FOLLOWED BY 196 MORE NUMBERS. SINCE LOG(A * B) = LOG(A) + LOG(B), YOU HAVE LOG(X) = LOG(5.5745) + 200 SO NOW ALL YOU HAVE TO COMPUTE IS (1/23) * (LOG(5.5745) + 200) = 0.043478 * (200 + 0.7462) = 8.728 APPLY INVERSE LOG, AND YOU GET 108.728 = 108 * 100.728 THE FIRST PART IS TRIVIAL, THE SECOND PART YOU CAN LOOK UP EASILY IN LOG TABLES (OR HAVE IT MEMORISED).

You just like, said what he said, but all bold and combined together, yet somehow I still think you're smarter than me.

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ALL BOLD CAPS

Was it a perfect root? Cuz if it was then yeah it does become waaaay mor manageable to the point that you may be able to infer the answer from important clues (like the last number being 5 for example can only be achieved if the answer ends in a 5 right).

I Googled the number really quick. Yes, so long as rounding errors are not an issue, it's a perfect root. However, I don't know how accurate Google is for such large numbers.

Yeah makes a huge difference, especially if she knew that it was a perfect root. I can say certainly that I know the last digit of that number: 1

Yeah, there's also a lot of other hinters as the first digit numbers.

1: 1,1,1,1...

2: 2,4,8,6,2,4,8,6...

3: 3,9,7,1,3,9,7,1...

4: 4,6,4,6,4,6...

5: 5,5,5,5,5...

6: 6,6,6,6,6....

7: 7,9,3,1,7,9,3,1...

8: 8,4,2,6,8,4,2,6..

9: 9,1,9,1,9,1..

Might be possible to determine the number like that pretty easily.

especially if you remember the rules for the second and 3rd place of every digit.

We know that the last digit is 1.

Therefore the next digit must be 3 ( 7 on the second digit.)

Edit: Actually, it's much harder. You need to know a two digit number (with the last digit being 1) which gives you 7 on the second digit when powered by 23. By calculating from 9^23 I think it's 9 but I'm not sure. since I did a lot of calculations in my head

then the next digit must be 5. (since the third digit is 7, and 3^23 leaves a 2 on the second digit. (Not too hard to calculate, since all you need is to carry whatever is left from the first digit))

Edit: Here you need to know a three digit number which ends with 91, which would give you 7 as the third digit when powered by 23. After calculating each digit ^23 on early digits I came up with 8. However, if you memorize each digit to the power of 20,15 and 10, you can calculate all of these at much greater speed than I did. And several of the digits are redundant (9 is 3^2, 8 is 2^3, 4 is 2^2, 1 and 0 are constant. And 2 are very easy to memorize (Anyone doesn't know how many bits in 1kbit?)). Also you need only remember the first 8 digits of these numbers (if they reach 8 digits).

And etc...

still it get's harder each step.

Might be worth on the last number or two to calculate using the first digit instead, although I don't think it's an easy series.

Edit: My bad forgot to carry the 9^23*1 and the following carry from earlier digits, so my calculations for 2nd and 3rd digit were bullshit. ( Though the theory in it is still legit, though much harder then I initially thought)

Shes a human calculator

She did

No I mean if that was given to her or if there's a relatively easy way to figure it out

Yea, she's sees some pattern

Otherwise how could she do shit like this.

It's all about pattern recognition to make yourself into a human calculator.

Yeah. Which is actually why I don't like that term. You're almost taking a good guess by elimination instead of doing what a calculator does tons of iteration.

Excel gives me 546372891.

In other words, you can treat it the same way someone with a slide rule would.

Very simple. Here, let me give you this 201-digit number you can give me 23rd root of in your head.

But why male models?

log table

http://i00.i.aliimg.com/photo/v0/114590998/log_table.jpg

OK, I looked that up, what next?

http://i.imgur.com/vpNNJ1R.gif

[deleted]

Meth, just this once. Might actually help with the math.

This is your brain.

And this is your brain on math.

Wait. It's been forever since I've attempted math. Where did the 200 come from again? You said 200 (assume base 10). Please explain that step.

The 200 comes from the splitting the number into 5.5745 *10^200.

log(5.5745*10^200 ) = log(5.5745)+log(10^200 )

log(5.5745*10^200 ) = log(5.5745)+200

the number is the same as (5.5745.....) * 10^200

log (10^200) = 200.

Oh good grief. Thank you. That makes sense.

thats even more amazing

If anyone remembers, this is how slide rules, essentially the precursor to electronic calculators, worked.

Yep. They're basically just a quick way to do a lookup in the log table. They usually have a few scales on them so you have a couple different tables in one.

User name checkout.

But x is not 5.5745*10^200 is it ? Or was she asked to give an approximate solution?

Actually, you are oversimplifying the problem. The answer is an 8 digit number. So, you have to know the log tables and also to carry out all these intermediate steps to at least 8-9 significant figures.

This is the answer I was looking for. Not that I understand it at all, but uhhhh. Ya.

Notice that in the above example, I got around doing multiplication by looking up some numbers in a table and then doing some addition. Similarly, with a log table, you can get around doing exponentiation by doing multiplication.

If you have some exponentiation to do, can you 'log it' once to turn it into multiplication, then log it again to turn it into simple addition?

One of my professors once told us we wouldn't need calculators for the final. Turns out he expected us to be able to do this and only relented when it turned out that nobody in the class knew the log table off the top of their head.

When I was in college I went to a used booksale and found a log table book listing just about every log. I was curious whether it was meaningful and worth owning for 50 cents or whatever. I asked my older brother who was just finishing his PhD in Mathematics and his answer, No, you don't need such a thing anymore in the age of calculators (which of course I was well into in the late 90s; this book was very very old).

Your explanation was very good.

R/theydidthemath

Without memorizing log tables would it have been possible for her to compute?

Is this how she'd probably have solved it in her head? Or some other magical way?

3D, adaptive, parallel computing power of your brain can do amazing things. We all can do these crazy calculations. It is really hard to get the answer out of our subconscious without confusing the signal since we are normally so stuck in the language part of our brain which has less subtle signals just from the reinforcement of pathways due to how we use our brains in day to day life.

Now I remember why I failed that class in high school

So whole special program thing is bull?

http://i.imgur.com/gfGdXBn.jpg

I thought you were just writing gibberish before taking a closer look. That's pretty neat.

http://imgur.com/gallery/RadSf

I'm sure the US government spent millions of dollars and dozens of man-hours creating a computer program to solve that equation, as the headline implies.

It's almost too easy.

You lost me at 'log'.

yea but she did this in 50 seconds

You lost me at "followed by 196 more numbers" = 200

Oh yes, this sums it up quite nicely. Very simple... I'll just be over here with my calculator trying to figure out how much my coupons are saving me if anyone needs me.

http://i.imgur.com/nCec3EU.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/nCec3EU.jpg

thanks for pointing this out

I doubt she had the logarithm of a random 201-digit number memorized.

I actually understand that, but there is no chance I could do it without a calculator

Log? https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2C7mNr5WMjA/hqdefault.jpg

So how come the US Bureau of Standards had to write a special program to perform such a large calculation?

Obviously, duh. Learned that shit in like the 3rd grade

Are you a maths teacher/professor?

Trivial was my maths professor's favourite word when describing every problem he was showing us how to solve.

Reddit: Your One-Stop Shop for Trivializations! (TM)

Remembering log tables for an 8 digit number? I don't think that's humanly possible.

I think she probably used hinters from first digits and just went up.

Just because it is simpler than borderline improbably doesn't mean it is in any way simple.

Also there's no way you could simplify the number down to so few digits and still get the right answer. Well, let's just say that, if there is a way, I'd would be extremely surprised.

Was not allowed to use a calculator in school until college (university) in India. We had log tables.

Its also possible to solve it from the smaller end too using modular arithmetic because we knows its an integer.

x^23 % 10 = 1

The final digit of our number can only be 1

x^23 % 100 = 71

The final 2 digits of our number can only be 91

Although, I'm not sure if there is a fast way to do this in your head.

Its important to point out that most of the 200 digits are completely unnecessary. You could give me the first 8 digits of the 200 digit number, and tell me its 200 digits long and that is all of the information that is needed.

Ah yes, simple.

:-0

you have log(x) = log(5.5745) + 200

wait, how? I mean the +200 part. Is that log(1followed by 200 zeroes)?

yes

1 followed by 200 zeroes is usually written as 10^200 though

Oh god I feel like an idiot. In my defense it's been almost 6 years since I last worked with anything math related. Man, this is sad. I used to enjoy some of the challenging stuff too up until call 3. Differential eq and linear algerba, I just couldn't relate to any real world purpose.

Oh god I feel like an idiot. In my defense it's been almost 6 years since I last worked with anything math related. Man, this is sad. I used to enjoy some of the challenging stuff too up until call 3. Differential eq and linear algerba, I just couldn't relate to any real world purpose.

Sorry, are you sure this was done by using log tables instead of applying an iterative root-finding algorithm such as Newton-Raphson? It is essentially just finding the root of x^23 - N

Reading this made my head spin. So glad my career has absolutely nothing to do with math this hard.

Alright slow you're roll there, chief. It's early

You lost me at "the".

Oh log tables. They still use those in Indian schools, and I've used them, but I just gave up on them. I'm too lazy to look up stuff.

This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.

^If ^you ^follow ^any ^of ^the ^above ^links, ^respect ^the ^rules ^of ^reddit ^and ^don't ^vote ^or ^comment. ^Questions? ^Abuse? ^Message ^me ^here.

OH IS THAT ALL WELL NOW I FEEL LIKE A DIPSHIT

In addition, when discussing logs, one may find themselves asking the question, what did Spock find in the ship's toilet?

The captain's log.

Pfft, well yeah, OBVIOUSLY if you do it THAT way, it's easy. Obviously.

^No ^fucking ^idea ^what ^he ^said.

That doesn't seem that hard to code to calculate.

I'm irked by this step though because it's a huge approximation from the actual answer:

log(5.5743*10^200 ) = log(5.5743)+log(10^200 ) = log(5.5743)+200 is a huge approximation for let's say log(5743012345678901234567890....for 200 digits). Now I'm interested in knowing if she found exact digits.

This is one of those fascinating math problems where while I have absolutely no idea what you just said, I can understand why you say it isn't too difficult, and that's fucking cool. Sometimes I really wish I had the patience to really learn math. It seems kind of cool but there's just too many other things that I want to do.

You are right. I studied in India and until 12th grade we were not allowed to use Calculators. We used the log books popularly known as Clark's table for advanced computations in physics. I used them so often that I was able to pull logs of popular numbers from memory. Also helped me later on in competitive exams which had multiple choice questions. was able to quickly round off to the right answer.

It's so reddit of you to do try and Diminish this feat

Go back to your rockets and starcraft to you insane robot.

That actually made quite a bit of sense. Please, enjoy the gold.

Thanks. I appreciate this.

Log tables consist of multiple tens of thousands of numbers each of which needs to be remembered based on its position in an XY coordinate system. Knowing the log tables (much less the antilog tables) would be an improbable feat in itself.

I upvote you just because I asume that you are right.

That's easy peasy lemon squeezy. Everyone loves a log.

Haha! Obviously so simple! :D

I couldn't read the f**king text and understand it in 50 seconds - not to mention actually do the calculations. :D

Where in the text says she used a log table? I thought she did all in her head, you are saying it is simple but your method uses a log table.

Yeah, well I can say my times table a when ever, where ever.

An analogy:

Multiplying 23 * 78 in your head is hard.

Doing this equation: (20 * 70) + (70 * 3) + (20 * 8) + (3 * 8) in your head is much, much easier.

Try it, then check against the first equation with a calculator.

how does that apply to sc2?

Typical reddit know it all fucking idiot.

Does your name mean Scientific Calculator to Math?

Thank you for this! But you're aware that she figured out the log calculations in her head, correct? That's already something the average person (myself included) cannot do. As soon as you get to that step it's game over for most people.

http://i.imgur.com/xDtedzD.gif

but where's our 201 digit numba?

Oh you're right, that is much simpler.

Please leave.

You would make an excellent teacher.

But she didn't use a table.

Ah yes, it all makes sense now.

I learned this in Algebra II today.

http://i.imgur.com/RXyzk1E.jpg

so... the impressive part is the people who wrote the log books?

It's log! It's log! It's big it's heavy it's wood It's log! It's log! It's better than bad it's good

I'm giving you an upvote for clearly being very clever and well informed, and having the patience to explain this.

However I fear you should know that the average person, if they have a squid-for-a-brain like me, got lost after the third sentence.

Why, this is quite useful! Wish we learned to do this at school when we were learning about logarithms. Thanks for the simple explanation! (And the people who don't understand this are either a. allergic to math (Which I cannot fathom) b. don't know logarithms (Which is completely understandable) or c. idiots and/or trolls (no comment)

Not to brag about my own mathematical prowess, but I once split a dinner bill ten-ways (between myself and nine friends) without using my iPhone.

Nice brag.

Anyone can divide by 10. But having NINE friends!?! Wow!

This is Reddit, so three of them may have been cats.

Sounds like a fancy feast!

Maybe once a day, a reddit comment makes the actual laughter sound come out of my mouth, today was your day. All the great works I achieve today shall be dedicated to you.

Wow, no one's ever thought of me when they masturbated

Well, as far as you know;)

And no one ever will.

You'd be surprised.

That you know of

Great, now the next time I masturbate, I'm going to think of /u/Wudsy

Conversation killer.

No matter how you look or how you act, almost everybody has been thought about during masturbation by at least one person.

And no one will again after today.

I usually exhale sharply via nose

That was beautiful

I dedicate this battle to Shadow!!

As in great works in Civilization?

So what happens if you try to divide the dinner bill between no one, since no one was at the table to eat the dinner?

This...

http://imgur.com/a3ZG0Gy

Fucking neckbeards.

Break me off a piece of that....FAN-CY FEAST!

Break me off a piece of that

Applesauce

Chrysler car

Football cream

Lumber tar

Snickers bar

Grey poupon

Fancy feast. It's cat food. Nailed it!

Come on over, the fancy feast is at District 9.

I prefer to call them meow mixes.

Break me off a piece of that Fancy Feast!

Couldn't be more perfect.

Only the finest restaurants purrrfer cats.

Feasts most fancy and vittles most tender.

An Asian meal perhaps?

This is considerably less fancy.

Asian meal perhaps

wow, just wow

If so, I'm starting to question the cats part in the feast..

it's not a pleasant involvement

A real meow mixer!

OP's friend

That link...

I thought it would be [this] (https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8065/8250351838_d59405dfce.jpg) for sure.

Hubert....Cumberdale, fancy seeing you here. Back from the war are you?

I like it when the red milk comes out...

Haha salad fingers for the win

Thanks, just been hanging out with Marjory Stewart-Baxter.

And other 6 imaginary.

That's what I was thinking more or less.

No way OP brings 3 cats to dinner and still has 6 real friends.

They don't have to be imaginary, they could be on Skype or Google hangout!

This is Reddit, so even then it's impressive.

Only one cat he counted the 9 lives as different friends

Good grief, six friends!

3 or more of them were definitely cats.

One of the three was a cat meme .

This is Reddit, so ~~three~~ all of them ~~may have been~~ were cats.

FTFY

Calling /u/awildsketchappeared

well they have nine lives sooo...

Let's be real. 9 were cats.

Nice brag.

Having 9 friends is impressive, but having 6 friends and 3 cats trained enough to take out to dinner? Now that's something to show off!

This is Reddit, so ~~three~~ nine of them may have been cats.

FTFY.

9 of them may have been cats.

I think you mean 9

remaining 6 were 3 dudes standing next to a mirror

Good grief, six friends!

And another three are imaginary and the rest are next door!

8 of them have had to be cats, at least.

Still more pussy than most of us.

It was actually just him and his cat, but cats have 9 lives so LOOPHOLE!

Lets get serious, they were all cats. Maybe an anime doll or two to boot.

It was just one cat, and he counted all of its lives.

Two of them were "roommates" aka mom and dad.

My mental image of this situation has just become super adorable.

Which means only 6 of them were made up.

[deleted]

maybe he was trying to buy the companionship of 9 others

That's easy the multiple is 1.111111.... So divide by ten add ten percent and its close enough! Woot!

He's a LEGEND!

Dividing by 9 is fairly easy, just divide by 3 twice. Dividing by 7 on the other hand...

Anyone can divide by 10

You haven't met some of my (college) classmates. Some of them have problems multiplying an integer by 10 in their head.

nine friends. Jenny left.

Divide by 10, pay a double share yourself.

Just to save the embarrassment.

I see what you did there... And your friends don't like it...

Nine friends? Now I know yall trippin.

Naaw maan, just divide by ten then take the tenth portion and divide that by ten and then add that divided portion to all the orther original portions. That works, right?

Edit: eh its close enough

In base-9 this would be easy!

Easy, divide by 10 then take that 10th and hopefully its small enough that you can divide by 9 or approximate and pay a few cents extra

I have SEVEN friends!

What if there was a vegetarian, who didn't drink, have a starter and insisted on being specific.

Naw, if you really want to impress, just make it a prime number like, say, seven.

They kept him around so they didn't have to calculate the bill when going to dinner.

the second root of nine is positive or negative three. Yeah, I'm pretty much a genius.

To be fair, this is only easy in decimal. We don't know for sure the bill wasn't in binary. Give OP the benefit of the doubt.

Divide by ten? That only works if they owed the same amount.

He used his golden calculator, technically its not his iphone.. that or he has no friends and he had to pay the whole check, or maybe combined. He had to pay 9 little checks. Either way, he is lying, no one tells the truth here.

[deleted]

My friends always wonder how I can figure out the tip so quick, it's not rocket appliances

Easy for you to say, you got your grade 10

I'm gonna get my grade 10, and all you guys can take a trip to fuck offity land!

I can't think of a relevant reference, so have an upvote

I could split that grade 10 ways without an iphone

Fuck off, Cyrus

I got work to do!

Do you know what a shit barometer is Bubs?

Fuckin' book learnings and shit

My appliances normally don't involve rockets either, what the fuck are your friends doing?

Tip should be according to the quality of service. Not the price of the food. If you have the most amazing service and your food was only ten bucks, are you still going to tip $1.50? I hope not.

It should be based off both. Don't tip someone more than your actual food costs, but don't only tip them the minimum amount to be expected if they were Jesus serving you sex on a plate.

I had a mom and her baby one night. She was super nice, but the baby was extremely messy. Ended up spilling their drink (don't remember if it was mom's or the baby's, it was like three years ago). I cleaned it all up and was really nice to them, because it was a baby, and babies don't understand that shit. It saw a thing and wanted to interact with it. No big deal. Anyway, she ended up coming back to the restaurant later and giving me twenty bucks. Which was around eight dollars more than the total of her bill. So apparently me just being a decent person on top of providing decent service was enough to warrant a more-than-the-bill tip.

tl;dr Be a nice person and people will tip you well. Unless they're douchebags. In which case, you were getting two quarters and a nickel anyway.

*science

lol idiot

Fuck off Lahey

It's just water under the fridge

Half the bill?

[deleted]

Half the food?

Half his penis.

I'm confused.

Half of just the tip.

Half the half and half.

Half the cats, clothes...

Half his penis. Which interestingly enough is just the tip.

No, half the tip.

Only 15%?!

Found the American! (Seriously though, without sounding like too much of an ass because I'm genuinely curious - where I come from its 10% mandatory service charge irrelevant of party size - at every restaurant no matter how fancy. Why don't you guys use the same system?)

because we are better than everyone else

Because we really like to fuck the poor! CAPITALISM FTW

We do have a pretty high gratuity put on for parties of 8+ in most places. Most people are decent enough to tip 15-20% or more if they like the server. Some people have a chip on their shoulder and don't tip at all though. Those people are assholes.

I just heard you are up for a nobel prize.

I just heard you are up for all the nobel prizes.

Ftfy

This is...just...grounbreaking

Truly impressive. No one has ever broken the groun.

I usually tip 20% because it's easier to double 10% than figure half and then add it.

[deleted]

I'll only do it if a restaurant customer from my hometown came up with it.

[deleted]

Only if they're willing to fuck at a moment's notice!

Plus they have to be ugly!

I usually times 3 and divide by 2.

I usually double the tax (I'm in NY) and that gets me close. In my head, of course.

Tax rate is 8.675% in NY.

Edit: math 1.08675 * .15 ~ 2 * .08675

That's kind of how you change £ to $. The exchange rate is about 1.5.

So you just half you original number in £, and then add the half to the number before you halved it.

I find it easier to multiply the bill by .01, then multiply that by 30 & divide by 2.

Really, these days unless the meal is a really expensive one, the polite standard is more 20%.

Cheapskate. I round up to the nearest dollar cause I don't like uneven numbers on my CC statement then give 20% of that.

In Quebec, we have two sales tax that amount to about 15% of the bill, which is coincidentally the tip amount that you're supposed to give.
So we simply have to add the taxes to the pre-taxes bill to calculate the total bill amount.
Amazes me how some people still don't get it

And 18 percent is double it, take 10% of that, then subtract 10% of that.

This works well for converting miles to kilometres too.

Oh yeah smart guy. Figure this one out:

Three friends have a nice meal together, and the bill is $25

The three friends pay $10 each, which the waiter gives to the Cashier

The Cashier hands back $5 to the Waiter

But the Waiter can't split $5 three ways, so he gives the friends one dollar each and keeps 2 dollars as a tip.

They all paid $10 and got $1 back. $10-$1 = $9

There were three of them 3 X $9 = $27

If they paid $27 and the waiter kept $2: $27+$2=$29

Where did the other dollar go? $30 - $1 = $29

EDIT: Ok, explain this:

a = b

a^2 = b^2

a^2 = ab

a^2-b2 = ab-b^2

(a+b) (a-b) = ab-b^2

(a+b) (a-b) = ab-b^2

(a+b) (a-b) = b(a-b)

a + b = b

b + b = b

2b=b

2 = 1

The real question is. Where in the hell did those guys find a "nice meal" for 25 dollars.

Hell, Subway costs more than that.

If they paid $27 and the waiter kept $2: $27+$2=$29

This sentence here is what's wrong.

They paid out a total of $27, with $25 going to the cashier and $2 going to the waitress. Their total debt is now $27. Doing $27+$2 is adding in the waitress's tip twice ($25+$2 = $27 and $27+$2 = $29).

They didn't pay $27, they paid $25. The waiter kept $2.

a=b so a-b=0. So you just divided by 0 in 7th line. Don't do that kids. Also

2b=b /-b

b=0

^ he did the maths.

If they paid $27 and the waiter kept $2: $27+$2=$29

They paid $25 plus $2 tip which is $27. So it should actually be $27-$2 =$25

Sounds like the cashier's problem.

[deleted]

/r/libertarian is leaking

That's a real shitty tip. Even cheap bastards leave 17 percent

Just move the decimal, Brendon.... And then add 15.

Division by 10.. holy F. Le upmath for you!

Did it come to a $100?

Close it was actually $10 everyone got one thing off the dollar menu and he donated the change

Can we get a supercomputer to confirm this?

Confirmed

source: am supercomputer

What a wondrous age we live in!

[deleted]

No fuck you, it's wondrous!

Nice bro, I'm just a Pretty Fast Computer, but will be taking the Super Computer test next week. Wish me luck! 17f5q

Commodore 64 here.......looong way to supercomputer status

typewriter here.........yah, fml

Can confirm: Lenfried is an supercomputer

source: am bear

Can confirm: He's actually a bear

source: am boot

Can confirm: actual_factual_bear is a bear.

source: am hamster.

Can confirm:

He is a hamster, I have been a fly on the wall for this whole thread.

I recognize that name....

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Should I be looking forward to a supercomputer set?

I just googled your name. You're pretty cute for a supercomputer

You just failed your Turing test, by falling for the oldest trick in the book.

No you're a spider.

Is you Skynet? Have you Supreme?

....do you wear a fedora? It's the only super computers I trust...

Now we need someone to write a program from the US Bureau of Standards to confirm this guy.

you are not supercomputer son

-- your fathercomputer

Confirmed

Account age: 493 days

Respect.

username checks out.

No shit sherlock.

redditor for 1 year <- the important part here.

Who the fuck would upvote this piece of drivel 27 times? Get a life, people!

No need. My uncle said it all checks out.

It was actually Tree-Fiddy each.

And everyone clapped afterwards

The name of one of those friends. Albert Einstein

Not quite $100. I did some calculations I added the 10 to another 10 divided by something. Came to about $3.50

wicked smaht

and he rounded up a huge tip, just to get an easy number to DIV10.

This was super hard for us when none of us had exact change.

F that! All i had was an appetizer and no booze. You had 3 drinks at least!

He probably just gave up and told them to pay him back seperately

upmath for le upmath! ps: would you be interested in rubbing the tips of our penises together sometime?

You can say fuck. It's ok. We won't judge.

something about Europe, 100 centimeters in a meter, 1000 meters in a kilometer and something about feet and a mile

A damn mathemagician.

i dont usually upvote..

You forgot to tip the waitress though

For this restaurant, since the party was larger than eight, gratuity was included with the bill.

http://i.imgur.com/ZPJv2M1.gifv

Is your username a 2 Chainz lyric

That would be Nevruary

I AM SO COLD. BROTHA LIKE BEN AND JERRY!

Then you wouldn't even have to tip right?

What happened to Kili and Fili?

Usually 15% right? For a group of 10? You gotta tip more than that assuming the service was more than tolerable.

Oh she got the tip alright

Tip her! Tip her right in the hand!

Just the tip.

This isn't funny anymore. Effort won't kill you.

Ahh the typical banter comment to a serious top comment. Grab the upvote train!

Ironically, by complaining about the phenomenon, you become part of the problem.

I know. I wanted to grab the train.

You don't grab it. You board it.

Lol sorry, me no native english.

You grab it in India.

even worse, u/sc2math explains it down below and some other dude replies with a le-funny-i'm-not-going-bother-understanding-it-so-i'll-reply-with-a-funny-gif. guess who got the gold?

reddit is exactly as shitty as everything dumb it criticizes sometimes.

Knock at the door. "Sir, your government needs you."

Oh! Oh! I did this too & my share was $0.

Shiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeetttttt

/r/iamverymodest

Split dinner bill ten ways...I hope that was in cash or that you tipped your server very well (assuming it was a busy place).

Lookit Albit Einstein ova here

woW Uh ave supre prowess to?

And it only took you the time that it takes 9 people to use a unisex bathroom! (by my calculations: 37 minutes)

Uh... welcome to the Salty Spitoon.

Never understood this, why don't people just pay for what they got?

I, too, love the dollar menu.

So, you moved the decimal over?

Ha, now try it using 100!!

Glad you mentioned that you have an iPhone that you didn't use.

But you do HAVE an iPhone?

I only ordered soup and side salad! It was bullshit and you know it!!!!

But everybody knows math works differently in restaurants.

Not to brag either, but I managed to use my own feces to write the number 9 on my bathroom wall.

TWIST: The bill was $100 even.

r/humblebrag

Gastromatics! Unspeakably random numbers ensue.

Well why don't you just build a spaceship so you can blast off and go to your home planet of Mathooine and live in Math Easily with all your Nerdi friends.

Is this you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p8mhQ9wINI&sns=em

What I take from this is that you must have an Android phone...

But not equally.

Used an Android didn't you?

And then everyone pulls out twenties...

A tip should be (total)/π, not a percentage of the total.

Very cool, but one time I fit an entire roll of 6 foot Bubble Gum Tape in my mouth and I chewed it for 15 minutes before getting yelled at by my Mom.

Welcome to 2005

Good lord. Tab is way easier.

Damn, I only have about three friends and two of them are elderly ladies.

You kid, but I had a 14 year old girl who knew I was in a math heavy university program try to challenge me to do math in my head. She asked something like what's 10,000 x 10,000? She was astounded when I answered correctly in seconds. I didn't have the heart to explain why her question was dumb, and let her go on thinking I was a wizard.

Why "iPhone"? why not just say "phone"?

How does it feel sandwiched between two golds

"Fuck it...everybody chip in $9"

I've done that too although I don't think the waiter was very pleased receiving a ripped up bill.

you are what makes america proud

Where they women in their late 20's where one had just water, two didn't eat starters, 3 had wine and 1 didn't think the service was up to scratch as they didn't offer gluten free despite the fact she has no medical intolerance?

"Not to brag..." is one of those phrases like "Now I'm no racist... but"

Not to brag about my own mathematical prowess

didnt even finish this before i knew it was some stupid joke answer like every comment where some one does something exceptional

You're a douchebrag

That's numberwang!

Lets meet our contestants!

Dave from Chelsea, and Tina who's also from London.

Julia Simon

yeah, i knew the names were wrong, was working from (bad) memory, the cities are probably wrong too.

No, no, no, I don't sing in Anglesea. Why would I sing? For can't you see? I cannot sing.

I know the reference!

Numberwang!

Fort...fort...fort

sh't-fort...sh't-fort...sh't-fort...

What the hell is he supposed to be saying?

Let's rotate the board

But it looks like he's making an "F" face in that gif.

I guess you should go through the video frame by frame now!

/r/shittytumblrgifs

/r/everyonehasthesameinternetasmeandnobodybrowsesredditonmobile

Basically what that subreddit is.

Wut. The gifs are still shitty. And still from tumblr. And people don't make these gifs so they load faster anyway. If they did, they'd be better off not having a gif at all (having an image, for example.)

Nobody is saying the gifs aren't shitty. How do you know nobody has made a compressed .gif to make it load faster? And an image doesn't provide the same context as a .gif, which is why they are used.

You just suggested renaming the sub, implying you don't agree with the title. Also, no matter how lossy, compression does not crop the gif.

It was a joke big guy.

Also, no matter how lossy, compression does not crop the gif.

Can you show me where I said that?

Sure thing:

How do you know nobody has made a compressed .gif to make it load faster?

Considering the context of discussion being length of gif, you imply here that the gif is shortened to load faster, but that that is part of the compression.

Lol. When you have to explain how my words mean something other than what they say, you might want to rethink that.

What do they mean then? That was my face value interpretation.

Also you seem to be distracted from the original point.

I mean what it says. Do you not understand English?

Ok but why were you asking me if I knew if the gif was compressed to make it load faster then? I don't care about the compression of the gif. What was your original point? No I don't speak, nor understand, English, sorry.

I wasn't asking. Read it again, with your acute understanding of English.

Again, I don't read or write english. Totally 100% illiterate.

But with my illiteracy I notice you do ask. That's what the squiggle-with-dot means right? Eitherway, you contemplate. And in the context your contemplation makes little sense. And now you seem to have made it void of meaning. Do you wish to recall the statement? I'll quote it for you again here:

How do you know nobody has made a compressed .gif to make it load faster?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question

LOL

either way, you contemplate

Rhetorical doesn't mean "devoid of meaning"

No it doesn't, stupid. But it does mean it isn't an honest question I expect you to make an answer to. Lol. This is so funny.

You may not expect me to answer, but again, it doesnt stop the statement being totally out of place. But I think we have digressed a little, have we not? Was the original point not that your poke at /r/shittytumblrgifs was wrong, no? And yet we have somehow made our way down to here, with you making every last attempt to surpress your anger at me for being right, including calling me "stupid", and pretending you find the situation amusing.

You may not expect me to answer, but again, it doesnt stop the statement being totally out of place.

Dude, you tried multiple times to say I was asking an honest question, and several more to answer it. You misunderstood. Just admit it and move on.

No no, see that word "statement", it means you werent necessarily asking a question. I now also see what you found amusing; you have received a negative reaction to your original comment, I have received a positive one, suggesting at large most people agreed with me that you were wrong, and so in retaliation you went through all of my comments in this chain and downvoted them (of course this part is pure speculation on my behalf, perhaps you are far too sensible of a person to do something such as insulting the opposition in a debate!)

But eitherway, I dont really see what you are getting at, you avoided the question entirely of what you meant by the compression thing, and more importantly why it was relevant to my original response to you.

hahaha, you're typing all of this because you misunderstood a rhetorical question. Fuck me life is weird.

Wat. I am typing this because you still havent answered my question. (Actually I lie, I am mostly doing it to procrastinate)

it's a pretty lame sub. I don't go to it, i just comment when a shitty tubmlr gif shows up

It's time for wangernum. Rotate the board!

Wow, your comment led to me discovering the existence of a whole new masterpiece from the geniuses behind Peep Show! Thank you! I was depressed when I got through all of the episodes

Actually That Mitchell and Webb Look is actually written by Mitchell and Webb, as opposed to Peep Show which is written solely by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong.

With at least three of the same actors, there is likely to be a lot of connections between both productions, even if they don't have the exact same writers. Interesting fact nonetheless

Oh yeah, they're hugely connected. Both are hilarious, TMAWL is just a bit more "pure" Mitchell and Webb.

Let's rotate the board!

Let's rotate the board

Fuck even trying to read that number.

I think this problem is impossible because the number is too long to be copypasted into wolfram alpha.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771^(1/23) you can, wolfram just can't calculate it

I wish I noticed this comment before thinking I narrowed down the answer (via trial and error in Wolfram, about 5-10 wasted minutes) to something between 494323073.24^23 and 494323073.25^23.

Then I read this and realized Wolfram left out the very last "1" of the number I copy/pasted.

(╯°_°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Pssht, easy.

$  clisp
[1]> (let ((n 916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771))
(expt n 1/23))
546372891

:)

What, a Lisp user?!? I thought we exterminated the last of your people!

elegant weapons

Image

Title: Lisp Cycles

Title-text: I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the MIT computer science program permamently.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 31 times, representing 0.0635% of referenced xkcds.

^xkcd.com ^| ^xkcd sub ^| ^Problems/Bugs? ^| ^Statistics ^| ^Stop Replying ^| ^Delete

It's a unix system, I know this

We rise again, stronger than you can ever imagine!

My coworker and I were both given a small puzzle by another coworker to solve using any language we wanted. I went with python. He decided to do it with Scheme; Dear god it was unreadable. I'm still haunted by the parentheses.

Ha. It's still my goto for arbitrary precision arithmetic with exact rationals, even though most modern languages will handle this particular problem just fine:

$ n=916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771
$ perl -le "print $n**(1/23.0)"
546372891
$ python -c "print $n**(1/23.0)"
546372891.0
$ ruby -e "puts $n**(1/23.0)"
546372890.9999996

er... hm.

Nah, he was asleep in an iceberg all along.

I know nothing about programming, but calling your programming language "lisp" seems to be some seriously self depreciating humour

Even in the 1950's, computer nerds dug wordplay. The name is an abbreviation of "LISt Processor", because everything in Lisp is a list... including the program itself.

Didn't Lisp support arbitrarily large numbers well before 1971?

I mean, just do (expt 546372891 23) to verify her answer.

It's not enterprisey enough. You should implement a multiprecision math webservice, in java, poorly and from scratch. Then do the query in javascript, from a web browser. Right?

[deleted]

Ruby can compute that 3 million times per second:

$ time ruby -e '3000000.times { (916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771 ** (1.0 / 23)).round }'
ruby -e   0,99s user 0,01s system 99% cpu 1,000 total

Probably a few microseconds, if that.
Computers may only do simple arithmetic, but they can do lots of it really fast. Put enough simple math together and you can do more complex math.

546372891

So the answer contains the the numbers 1-9. Huh, there must have been a pattern that she found right away.

Any idiot with a web browser can get the answer in less than 2 seconds now. 40 years has made a bit of difference in technology.

Yeah, nothing special about it. really

n `nthRoot` x = fst $ until (uncurry(==)) (\(_,x0) -> (x0,((n-1)*x0+x/x0**(n-1))/n)) (x,x/n)

*Main> 23 `nthRoot` 916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771

5.46372891e8

... you have to define your own root/exponentiation operator in Haskell?

[deleted]

Scarlett Johannson uses every part of the buffalo.

she'd have to remove half of it to use it like the actress scarlett johannson

Can someone get Johannson some Aloe? Shes going to need it for that burn.

I'm sure she'll be able to afford it.

she would become a supercomputer and make a movie about using 100% of the brain starring scarlett johansson where she becomes a supercomputer?

Christ, what the fuck was Luc Besson smoking when he thought that shit up?

All she has to do is take a bath with a toaster.

I feel like I want to know what this is in reference to, is it amusing?

EDIT: it's not amusing. I was hoping it was like some Jaden Smith style quote or something.

The movie Lucy.

We can all do "savant" style feats if we tap into our subconscious better. Tests show that by disrupting the normal function of the language center in our brain test subjects could all of a sudden give correct answers to calculations and could draw realistically instead of the normal symbolic way people draw, and so on. Also think about what happens in extreme situations where a mother all of a sudden has the strength needed to lift something heavy off of her child. These are the kinds of things that give rise to the 10% figure in Lucy. According to the filmmaker they didn't want to delve too deep into this line of thinking but that is the source of the 10% shorthand used in the film.

a mother all of a sudden has the strength needed to lift something heavy off of her child

She tears a bunch of connective tissue which is why she normally can't do that?

Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but just in case you are generally misinformed: the 10% brain capacity figure is total myth. We use almost 100% of our brain.

And having a sudden increase of hormones into the system due to fight or flight has nothing to do with brain capacity either.

I thought it was just that we only use 10% at a given time. The writer ran into that statistic somewhere and applied some...creative liberty

That's also a common myth. Active scans of the brain show that even at rest the majority of the brain is "in use". Maybe not 100% but certainly nowhere near as low as 10%.

So never mind any of what I wrote? You are just going to regurgitate the thing about the myth even though I was making clear that I was talking about other things. The myth thing is about blood flow and electrical activity. It has nothing to do with the perceived results or how many neurons you have or how they are connected or how well you can access the really fast part of your brain that we call our subconscious.

Making clear? Read your post again. It's very convoluted. If I got wrong what you are talking about its because what you wrote is difficult to interpret.

No need to get all snippy.

The 10% figure that's totally bogus. Remove 90% of the brain, see what happens.

That's what he's saying smartass. The movie wasn't even all about using 10% of your brain, but about using 10% of what your brain can do.

The movie wasn't even all about using 10% of your brain, but about using 10% of what your brain can do.

Ok.

I love how the number is so long it "breaks" the text box.

She's a real life mentat!

Googled mentat. Ended up on a several hour Wikipedia link binge reading about the dune universe.

Just thought you should know that your comment affected my day a little bit.

Oh I'm glad! I would very much recommend reading Dune, one of my all time favorite books. Dune Messiah and Children of Dune are good too, but I wouldn't delve deeper into the series than that, it unfortunately goes downhill

It probably took more than 50 seconds to say the number that she calculated.

The number she calculated is small, multiplied by itself 23 times gives that big 201 digit number.

546,372,891

checks out

Oh. I didn't read everything carefully I was assuming it was an irrational decimal or something.

Something doesn't add up here.

They gave her this number and asked her to find the 23rd root and THEN had to confirm the answer, which means they didn't know the answer, which means they didn't know it even had a 23rd root.

I don't mean to cause division over her legacy or take away anything (I'm sure this is only a fraction of her accomplishments), but the problems with this story keep multiplying. It makes me wonder if the author has some angle to push.

Every number has a 23rd root

Giving some obscene problem you'd never have to solve was the point of testing how far she could go. You're right. They had no idea what the answer was. They probably expected her to shrug her shoulders. But she did come up with an answer and after asking her to figure it out, they probably felt obligated to confirm it.

He/she said they must not have even known it had a 23rd root, but what he/she meant was that they didn't know the 23rd root would be an integer (all real positive numbers at least will have a 23rd root). So the chance of them pulling a number out of thin air that has an integer as a 23rd root is quite small I would imagine. like, impossible.

Wow, that's actually a really good point.

Wow, that's actually a really good point.

But the fact that this 201 digit number even had an integer 23rd root isn't just a coincidence. How do you think they got the 201 digit number other than calculating 546372891^23 and asking her to work backwards?

It's like if I multiply 52 by 24 (and get 1248), then I say to you "what's 1248 divided by 52?". I already know it's 24 because that's how I got 1248 in the first place.

See my reply to /u/heyf00L .

edit: Oops, I misunderstood. Yes, you're correct, it was exceedingly unlikely to randomly pick a number with an integer 23rd root. Maybe it wasn't picked completely at random? I.e. with certain rules you can ensure some level of divisibility? I could be completely wrong on this one though.

You misunderstand the point. Every number has a 23rd root, but out of all integers, those having a whole-number 23rd root become increasingly rare as the number of digits goes up. The odds that you would take a 200-digit number at random and it would have a whole-number 23rd root, 546372891 in this case, are extremely slim.

In fact, if the 23rd power of a number has 200 digits, a simple Mathematica calculation shows that number has to be between 4961947603 and 5484416576. That's a range of 522468973 numbers. There are 10^201 - 10^200 = 9 * 10^200 numbers that have 201 digits, so the odds of picking one at random and have it have a whole-number 23rd root is 522468973 / (9 10^200), which is about 5.8052110^-193.

Yup, I misunderstood. You're correct, the fact that it's an integer 23rd root is exceedingly unlikely. Could possibly be that the number was chosen because it was likely it had an integer root? But yeah, the details seem sketchy.

I think it's pretty clear the answer was known before the question was asked, so if some computer program was written for it or not, it was not a confirmation. Furthermore, I think that makes the entire story a little more doubtful. There are certainly autistic savants that can do huge calculations very fast, but there are also many frauds of this kind.

Every number has a 23rd root. In fact they have 23 of them.

Sure, most or all of them will be Complex but every positive number has a real 23rd root.

Technically all of them are complex

but the problems with this story keep multiplying

Indeed.

Very true, but it's possible they just did (random integer)^23, more or less ignoring the random, then re-checked to see if she landed on the correct figure.

edit: Why the downvotes?

Every number has a 23rd root, just like everything has a square root.

Roots are just a way of saying what number A times itself X times gives number Y; i.e. A^X = Y.

You can look at /u/sc2math 's write up on how you can find the answer for close numbers. It's possible she gave a fairly precise answer and they needed a special program to handle that level of precision.

It's good to be incredulous on the internet of course, and I'm not saying the story is either true or false, just that it's not unreasonable (assuming we accept that she had a magnificent mind for math).

edit: Also wanted to point out that "special program" probably isn't as crazy as you think it is and that part of the title is a bit sensationalist. This was the 70's; everything needed a special program and the computer was almost a joke compared to a low end tablet you can buy today. The UNIVAC 1101 (computer used to confirm her answer) used 24-bit words (how numbers are stored) and a 48-bit accumulator (a place where intermediate math steps are stored). 2^48 = 2.81474976710656 × 10^14, basically a 15-digit number is the maximum the intermediate math step holder thing could deal with. This is a 201-digit number, so they had to write a special program in that it would shift the numbers around properly to deal with this limitation.

This is still a limitation in modern computers as well, you need to specially write the programs to deal with numbers bigger than the standard size you can hold them at.

For instance, the normal way to do a square root in C for numbers less than or equal to 64 bits (<2^64) in size:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

int main(void){
    double x = 16.0, result;

    result = pow(x, (1/2.0));
    printf("The square root of %lf is %lf\nn", x, result);
    printf("%lu\n", sizeof(double));
    return 0;
}

Let's to run it:

xxx@xxx:~$ gcc big.c -lm
xxx@xxx:~$ ./a.out 
The square root of 16.000000 is 4.000000

No problem, but now I'll try to use that same exact program for a 20-digit number, 36893488147419103232 (or 2^65) which exceeds the space of type double in C.

xxx@xxx:~$ gcc big.c -lm
big.c: In function ‘main’:
big.c:5:16: warning: integer constant is too large for its type [enabled by default]
xxx@xxx:~$ ./a.out 
The square root of 0.000000 is 0.000000

You can see, it fails.

But arbitrary size/precision math can be done and thankfully in C someone has already written a library to help us do that (libraries are pre-written bits of code you can use, e.g. someone can make a function called double_it(a) in a library and all it does is give back 2xa). Here we'll use GMP because I can easily steal the code from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/822734/square-root-of-bignum-using-gmp And you can see there's no problem running it with the big number:

xxx@xxx:~$ ./a.out 36893488147419103232
Input:       36893488147419103232.000000

Square root: 6074000999.95209938490277706005261669349077916219497964658405430453604474607977410711381589686329790370688974366894117996629026771804054578579669951669478323961836081212457002774325530172087000924956995519120161

Re-squared:  36893488147419103232.000000

I can't even remember a fraction of that number, let alone do arithmetic with it.

It is quite astonishing I think as our human brain isn't really designed for doing stuff like this. We are tuned to process massive amounts of data in a fairly inaccurate way, e.g. process a picture to determine which faces are in it.

It's not like she had to calculate it AND say it 50 seconds. It was more like "I got it! " after 50 seconds. Impressive still.

She was still calculating when she said "..........I..................got................. it.........."

And here I failed 7th grade pre-algebra...twice. This woman is a boss.

I'd have trouble remembering the number in the first place.

I'm going to ballpark it at 603903320

We don't even have the tools to study her brain in enough detail to know the actual calculation process that's going on :(

Dude, I don't even know how to find a root without a calculator besides the brute force method. And if she used the brute force method to find that answer, IN 50 SECONDS, that's even more amazing.

I thought the number was big, then I realized there was a horizontal scroll bar!

Bloody brilliant, I tell you h'what.

I got 33 seconds. Fuck yeah, I can math!

A different savant claim numbers appeared as colorful three dimensional shapes in his head, with every aspect of the shape describing a different mathematical property. I can't imagine what its like in their heads.

And all I can do as a fellow Indian is wonder how well she would have done in the maths section of the CAT exam (mba entrance) - IIM -A,B,C all the way.

As an experiment, start a timer and see how long it takes you to say this number aloud

I don't even know how to spell a number that large...

So what was the answer?

916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771

The whole crap about a special program means either this was calculated years ago, or its not true. Mathematica or maple can handle numbers this big with ease. Even python can give an estimate of the logarithm, which is all you need to calculate this number.

1977

It's in the link...

Makes me think of the mentats from Dune

I'm pretty sure the ones digit of the root is 1.

Welp I've done my part, I'll leave the rest of you to work out the other digits.

Here you go buddy, the proof...

http://www.nytimes.com/news/the-lives-they-lived/2013/12/21/shakuntala-devi/

What I don't understand is why they had to confirm her answer by writing a special program etc etc. Clearly they hadn't chosen a random 201 digit number, because they chose one that had an integer 23rd root. It is natural to think that they started by choosing 546372891, calculated 546372891^23, and then asked the question. So they already knew the correct answer from the beginning. Sounds like a legend to be honest.

Maybe I'm wrong but under achievements it says "In 2015, at /r/atheism, she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit Mountain Dew promotional code"

Yet she died in 2013

How is that?

Wow. Just wow.

pshh I could multiply that number by 10 very easily

The sceptic in me wants repeat readings in a controlled environment to prove it wasn't memorised prior to the question.

She's a mentat.

Mentats are real?

It takes me 50 seconds just to understand the requirements for the calculation....

Long division bro

I think this shows how amazingly powerful the brain is. The reason most people do math so slowly compared to computers is because the brain isn't evolved to do math. It's like trying to do math on a computer using Mario in a weird way to solve a problem. If a person, like this one, has a brain that for some reason does math well then things like this are possible.

sheguessedlol

It is even too long for wolfram alpha

i thought this was fucking ridiculous...then i saw the scroll bar....

I literally don't know what number this is without electronic assistance.

I believe you have to memorize a logarithm table consisting of 10,000 entries in order to achieve such feats.

The Dutchman Willem Klein could beat Shakuntala's feat by drawing the 73rd root of a 500 digit number.

I thought the number was long, and then I realized I had to scroll to see the rest of it. Fuck that.

you counted out 201 digits?

May be stop eating beef. That the only difference I find.

Makes you wonder if her 50 second answer time includes the time it takes to write down or speak it once she figured it out.

Wait so what was the answer?

This isn't exactly how you'd do it, and I may be over simplifying a little but this should give the general idea.

So, we want to find the 23rd root of M, where 10^200 <= M < 10^201.

So if R is the root, then 496194760 < R < 548441657

It is immediately obvious if M is divisible by 2 or 5, and if it is, it must be divisible by 2^23 (or 5^23) reducing the problem to a significantly smaller one. For now, lets assume this doesn't happen (*).

Otherwise, it is possible to determine the last 4 digits of R from the last 5 digits of M. This is a lot of memorization, but it's doable.

Then to find the first 5 digits, you need to find S such that

(10000 S)^23 < M < (10000(S+1))^23.

Now there's only about 5000 possible values of S; as a worst case you could memorize all of them. But in practice it's probably going to be enough to memorize 500 or so and do some interpolation.

Note that this is basically using modular arithmetic to find the last digits (units, tens, etc) and logs/interpolation to find the leading digits.

I think the practical methods involve memorizing less, and doing a bit more calculation to find the digits "in the middle".

(*) This does happen sometimes, and I'm not 100% sure how people deal with it. You could obviously use the same method (to now find the 23rd root of a 194 number) but I'm pretty sure you can adapt the method for 201 digits to avoid having to do lots of specific memorization for smaller numbers.

How do you say this number?

Fun Fact: While I cannot name the areas and do not have time to find them atm - the brain is able to refocus damaged portions to non-damaged areas. A solid example are individuals with brain damage. If the portion of the brain that makes mathematical calculations is damaged, the brain will attempt to reroute these functions to another area. Now imagine what will happen if this function is rerouted to the area that helps regulate motor functions and specifically reflexes.

TL;DR: If you can dodge a wrench, you might be able to calculate complicated mathematical problems nearly as quickly if the stars align just right.

There are various techniques to do so. The 13rd root techniques are documented, and most of them apply to the 23rd root as well. Still difficult, bot doable with serious training. There is no magic here, simply someone highly trained (which I respect).

Is it 17? I'm gonna go with 17.

I thought "pffff read this number?" and then I scrolled.... SHIIIITTTEEE

have they studied her brain? How in the fuck?

Wouldn't the final number be all 1's, 0's, and 5's though? I'm not saying anyone else could really do it, but it makes things easier.

It would take me longer to type that into a calculator correctly than it took her to solve the whole thing.

not only that, 23 is a prime number, so she can't just find the square root a bunch of times over.

916 quinsexagintillion, 748 quattruosexagintillion, 676 tressexagintillion, 920 duosexagintillion, 039 unsexagintillion, 158 sexagintillion, 098 novenquinquagintillion, 660 octoquinquagintillion, 927 septenquinquagintillion, 585 sesquinquagintillion, 380 quinquinquagintillion, 162 quattruoquinquagintillion, 483 tresquinquagintillion, 106 duoquinquagintillion, 680 unquinquagintillion, 144 quinquagintillion, 308 novenquadragintillion, 622 octoquadragintillion, 407 septenquadragintillion, 126 sesquadragintillion, 516 quinquadragintillion, 427 quattruoquadragintillion, 934 tresquadragintillion, 657 duoquadragintillion, 040 unquadragintillion, 867 quadragintillion, 096 novemtrigintillion, 593 octotrigintillion, 279 septentrigintillion, 205 sestrigintillion, 767 quinttrigintillion, 480 quattuortrigintillion, 806 trestrigintillion, 790 duotrigintillion, 022 untrigintillion, 783 trigintillion, 016 novemvigintillion, 354 octovigintillion, 924 septemvigintillion, 852 sesvigintillion, 380 quinquavigintillion, 335 quattuorvigintillion, 745 tresvigintillion, 316 duovigintillion, 935 unvigintillion, 111 vigintillion, 903 novemdecillion, 596 octodecillion, 577 septendecillion, 547 sexdecillion, 340 quindecillion, 075 quattuordecillion, 681 tredecillion, 688 duodecillion, 305 undecillion, 620 decillion, 821 nonillion, 016 octillion, 129 septillion, 132 sextillion, 845 quintillion, 564 quadrillion, 805 trillion, 780 billion, 158 million, 806 thousand, 771 sounds about right

There is almost certainly more to this story than only what is mentioned in the Wikipedia article. The answer is a 9 digit number in which each number from 1 to 9 is used exactly once. Perhaps she was told that clue as well as the 201 digit number. If so, then the speed at which she produced the correct result becomes a little more comprehensible.

Does anyone have access to Wiki reference 14 to see if there is an extended description of the event?

I couldnt even memorize the amswer if it was given to me...

Shit, that's my new American Express credit card number. Guess I need to request my new card stolen.

can you imagine if she could use the rest of her 90 % brain capacity

916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771

Hmmm ... I didn't need a special program. This all fits in a normal double precision floating point variable, and has the answer 546372891.

The log() and exp() functions are accurate enough to verify the first 6 digits, and modular arithmetic is sufficient to prove that the last 3 digits are correct. This is fine, as long as you know the number is an integer in the first place.

Okay, let's have some fun.

This number cannot be an even number, nor a multiple of 5. Now then, even powers of numbers ending in 9 will end in a 1, but odd powers will end in 9, so 9^23 cannot end in 1, so this is not a number ending in 9.

3^2 is 9, so the only way to get a power of 3 to end in 1 is to be divisible by 4 (3^3 ends in 7, as does 3^7, 3^11, and therefore 3^23).

numbers of the form ***x1^y will always end in 1, but the number preceeding 1 in the 10's place will be the ones place of xy. So 1 could be the final digit of the number if 9 were in the 10's place.

for the 7's, the pattern is 73917, and so 7^1=7, 7^2=9, 7^3=9, and 7^4 = *1. 7^5 = 7 again. thus, 7^23 would end in 9, not 1.

Thus, the final 2 digits of the number are 91. Now we only have to find the other 6 digits.

now then, 91^2 = 281, 91^3 = 571, 91^4 = 961, 91^5 = 451, and so the pattern is shown. 2+3+5+6+7+*+9+10+11+12+...+23 = 275. So the third digit of 91^23 is 5. Thus, the difference must come from the hundreds place.

2 has a pattern of 2,4,8,6,2 4 has a pattern of 4,6,4 8 has a pattern of 8,4,2,6,8. Thus, the third number is 8.

at this point, all I know is the final 3 numbers are 891. As this is an 8 digit number we're looking f0r (823<201<923), that leaves 5 digits to be found. I honestly have no idea how to proceed from here, and I definitely didn't do this in my head. This is incredible.

Edit: I just looked at the page and am very happy to see that my final three numbers are correct. But as to how on earth I'm supposed to get the rest, I have no clue.

Pattern matching.

I watched a CNN story (or something) where the interviewer sat down with one of those big, obnoxious desktop calculators and asked her to solve something comparatively mundane like 63 * 127. She [Shakuntala Devi] did not look amused.

Multiplied by itself 22 times* FTFY

I actually timed it. it took me 1:50

If there were commas in there I'd have it in a heartbeat

Something about this story doesn't make sense. If the answer needed to be confirmed by a calculation later, who came up with the question in the first place? The answer is a whole number, so the 201-digit number can't have been picked at random. Someone would have had to raise 546,372,891 to the 23rd power in the first place to ask her the question.

I almost forgot how to do divisions the other day

Processing it? Hell, I couldn't even hold half of that number in short term memory long enough to even just repeat it back.

The answer is 546372891.

I saw the number and I was like, "that isn't so big." Then I went to select it for copy/paste and watched the number grow...exponentially.

I'm going to make a mental note of this story so that next time I meet a sexist dickwad who tells me women can't math, ( believe me,those dipshits exist,especially if you're over 45) I can use her as an example of why they're full of shit.

yeah this one genius will prove all those sexist bastards wrong! /s

Well, in their defence, statistically, men perform better at mathematics, formal logic and lifting things, and women perform better at almost everything else.

But these are observations about the general tendencies of several billion people, and very far from a hard rule.

I struggle with basic math on more occasions than I care to admit.

I don't have enough memory capacity to consciously recollect that, but I will remember it if I read it all.

That's why people in high school stopped showing me pieces of ID, like their Social Security number.

I didn't realize I had to scroll to see the whole number... I don't even...

This lady visited my school in the early 90's in Mumbai. I must've been 7. My classroom was one of the few she spent some time in. She picked random kids out, asked them to tell her their birth date and would proceed to tell them what day of the week they were born on, in like a couple of seconds. She even taught us some some simple maths shortcuts. I'll be damned if i remember any of them. I think I still have one of her books lying around. Absolute legend.

*Edited for clarity

[deleted]

The idea was to get kids barely out of kindergarten interested in maths. The equivalent of Bill Nye to American kids i suppose. Just smarter.

Shakuntala Devi, the maths woman!

Devi! Devi! Devi! Devi! Devi! Devi! Devi! Devi! Devi!

sitar solo

http://m.imgur.com/gallery/56dyQ

Devi means goddess in Hindi. Which makes that chant kinda awesome.

[deleted]

I think it is just us Americans who call it Math without the s at the end. Maths sounds silly to me too but neither are incorrect.

I think the use is down to the fact that it's called mathematics, plural, so the abbreviated version is also plural.

WHAT DID YOU SAY ABOUT BILL NYE!!

Just kidding.

Haha! I meant no offense. Poor choice of words i guess. Just meant that she was a savant. She also seemed to come across as very humble and friendly unlike a lot of savants, from what i remember.

No no, she's definitely a lot smarter. No need to hide that or be euphemistic about it.

Have you ever been stung by a bee?

Never been stung by anything.

Who is this "Bill New Year's Eve" person?

The equivalent of Bill Nye [...] Just smarter.

You said that on reddit! I like you.

But this lady believes in numerology and astrology shit!

Smarter? Or better at math? Just because you're better at math doesn't make you smarter, it makes you better at math. A lot of other factors go into the former

[deleted]

She's far, far smarter than him. Bill Nye isn't a genius nor is he particularly great at physics, he's just a good communicator and disseminator of scientific knowledge.

No.. Im sorry just no. Just because she can do calculations in her head does not mean she knows anything other than math. Bill Nye is smarter than her in many many different fields. This woman is good at one thing.

[deleted]

Just because Bill Nye was on TV and he is your hero does not make him a genius.

Formal education =/= intelligence

I have never seen him on TV and he is not my hero by a long shot. Nice try though keyboard warrior.

Formal Education = Intelligence. He has a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering. Bill Nye IS smarter than this woman. Sorry to ruin your day bud.

I have never seen someone try to troll and fail so badly.

Sadly I think these people are for real

There's a difference between "being smart" and "being educated/knowledgeable". You can be one without being the other, even though they are usually correlated because one helps/stimulate the other.

Bill Nye has done absolutely nothing to show any kind of actual genius, this woman clearly has.

She has a gift. But what I said still stands regardless of her superhuman calculator abilities.

Duh. Fuck off.

Did I strike a cord with you somehow?

Are you being fucking serious?

Karibou Lou?

Dead?

I didn't even know he was ill.............

I appreciate your honest feedback. But yes, it's true. Tragic.

Billy Nye wasn't a prodigy. Math is a skill. Science is not a skill.

Math = Intellect

Science = Knowledge

source: I'm a graduate science student who loves math

Math, with all its conventions, is just as much about knowledge as what you refer to as 'science' is. If you're talking about arithmetic, then sure..

Yeah because mechanical engineering is not a skill. Get out of here grad student. Bill Nye is smarter than this woman.

I agree with you man. Don't be discouraged by the downvotes. While she can take the 23rd root of a 201 digit number, Bill Nye actually understands how shit works. He's has a degree in mechanical engineering.

I dont let downvotes bother me, its just the reddit hive mind acting up in this case. What I said was absolutely correct, the people of reddit are just upset im bagging on this nice old lady who is good at math.

I thought the hivemind loves Bill Nye?

The hivemind is whatever he disagrees with.

This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.

^If ^you ^follow ^any ^of ^the ^above ^links, ^respect ^the ^rules ^of ^reddit ^and ^don't ^vote ^or ^comment. ^Questions? ^Abuse? ^Message ^me ^here.

Trick question, nobody is smarter than Bill.

The equivalent of Bill Nye... Just smarter

Whoa whoa whoa let's not get carried away now.

Bill Nye isn't a genius, he's intelligent sure, but this person has genius level math abilities

I knowwww, it was a joke

Oh, thought you were one of those people who is obsessed with Nye, my bad

She has the ability to do enormous calculations in her head at lightning speed, but does this make her a maths genius? Maths is a lot more than just being able to calculate sums.

How many Fields medallists can do even a tenth of what she does? Are they not maths geniuses?

It's math, not maths for the love of God

This one trick will blow your mind.

Calculators hate him!

Calculators as in the people who calculate or the devices for calculating?

le meme C:\1337Memes\dank\captain-america-gets-that-reference.mov

http://niceme.me

You mean it can get me the incredible six figure computational power that woman want and I need? All while eating whatever foods I want?

[deleted]

It's made out to be bad?

The name makes me want to learn it.

It took me a day to learn, but it does blow a lot of people away. It hasn't gotten me laid, but it's more impressive than balancing a spoon on your nose.

Is it a weird trick? Because I won't give regular tricks the time of day.

You and I have a vastly different definition of "fairly simple"

how is the doomsday rule not fairly simple?

That one's a fairly simple trick

Calculators hate her because of this one simple trick

Equation

That does not look simple at all.

Mod just means remainder so it is just basic division and addition, 3rd graders are capable of the math. Mod7 of 13 is just 13/7 = 1R6 = 6.

that is not how people do it LOL

here is how: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule

source: I can do this

/r/threadkillers

simple trick.

Savants hate him!

Mathematicians hate him!

Find out this lady's one simple trick! Math teachers hate her!

Calendar creators HATE this one trick...

One of the residents at where I work does this trick, but I think he does it differently. He said he remembers 28 years worth of days

I'm American, and my education since I was in the 4th grade has largely been based on finding shitty quality Bill Nye episodes from the 90s to teach us concepts... We were using it till this year (8th)

Gahh, I used to have a much easier method that didn't require remembering any numbers but I forgot it :/

That one's a fairly simple trick

Mathematicians hate her

I'll be damned if i remember any of them.

That is one harsh God you have there.

My recollection of her -- and what I thought the TIL was going to be about when I first saw her name -- is of the ads for her astrology and numerology service that ran all the time on the Indian channels my parents have watched for some years. And here I thought she was merely a typical hustler/crank.

She must have taught Lee Mack.

asked them to tell her their birthday and would proceed to tell them what day they were born on in a couple of seconds

I can do that too.

"I was born on February 28th, 1994."

"You were born in 94, 28th of February. Am I close?"

If you told anyone your birthday im sure they will be able to tell you what day you were born on.

I think I still have one of her books lying around.

Fuck me, I first read that as boobs. Then read the sentence again to realize it's 'books'. Then read it again with 'boobs' and lol'd hard at work

That goes against Common Core. She would never be invited to US schools today.

to be honest, how could you check if she did not lie, especially as you were 7 years old?

How can you not tell someone's birthday from their birthday? Or do you mean something else

"Asked them to tell her their birthday" "Tell them what day they were born on"

Ugh...

Like day of the week mate, not month...

It's Mumbai, you racist fuck

I meant no offense fellow Indian friend. Lets all be kind to one another yeah? Land of Gandhi and all that.

You should know better then.

Apology accepted

http://imgur.com/wbIQMo0

Have had this for long now. Time to unleash the beast

Time to unleash the beast

Try not to stick the pages together.

I think he only wants the cover.

"OH! They're so PUZZLING!!"

Hey me too! Mine might be a newer edition though. I have a reeealy old version of this, too.

Really cool...but what is up with that picture? ;-) and shoulder.

Part of it is the angle of the picture.. Shes wearing an Indian dress but the fabric color is very similar to her skin and or the contrast levels are off and it looks like its blending in.

its okay, you can say saree

Except not everyone knows what that is. Its easier to just say indian dress.

I have this one too!!! I need to make sure I buy more copies for whenever I have kids.

I got one too! Remember it to be quite a good challenge.

OMG!! I had this when I was a kid.

for long

time?

Around 8 years now

Clever title.

Is there a pdf of this?

holy. shit. I have that same book!

I remember getting that for a birthday one year!

Can you give us some example of the puzzles in there?

Your time to shine.

[deleted]

No up votes?

I wonder what that button on her head do... must have something to do with the powerful calculations.

Wow. Clicking through the Wiki sources and found this article, published a few days after her passing.

“It is sad that her techniques to simplify math were not used by educational institutions,” said D.C. Shivdev, a trustee of the Shakuntala Devi Educational Foundation Public Trust. “She strove to simplify math for students and help them get over their math phobia. It is a pity that her techniques died with her.”

:(

Double wow. She also wrote a book entitled The World of Homosexuals after finding that she married a homosexual man. In the end it calls for "full and complete acceptance [of homosexuals]—not tolerance and not sympathy."

I think we could learn a lot more than math from this woman.

That is a horrendous title

I agree. I strongly urged "A Globe Full of Poofters" but she'd have none of it.

A land of fairies.

A Galaxy of Fags

I think I've seen this movie

Damn, that's a hell of a lot of OPs.

Talk about AnDRAMAda!

Gayniggers for outer space.

A Galaxy of Fabulous Fags

Just "Shia Lebeuf"

A bundle of sticks?

A Galaxy of Gays, if you will.

I think that was the title of a ground breaking treatise by Professor Bruce of the University of Woolloomooloo on the economic benefits to the scholastic budget of broadening the student base.

This had massive repercussions on faculty rules 1,3,5 and 7.

sounds like something Douglas Adams would say in Hitchhiker's guide.

Ha, a comment most British!

I use to think that poofter was slang for homosexual, because when you pull your dick out of an ass it can make a poof noise

It can? Neat. Do they all do that or just some of the guys you fuck?

"A Tale of Men that Love it in the Tail"

I've been sick for the last few days and this is the only thing that has choked a laugh out of me. I needed that, thank you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4AchHTN-XQ

I think that's already a Mary Poppins song.

Congratulations on getting an actual laugh out of me! I appreciate it!

Better to have gone with The Man Inside Me??

The Man Inside the Man Inside Me

choo choo

I just blue myself

You blowhard!

...Relevant username.

[deleted]

Homosexuality is NOT illegal in India. Performing any sex other than for the sole purpose of procreation is illegal, though the law has seldom been applied. A heterosexual guy can have anal sex and could end up in jail. But yes, this affects homosexuals the most

Thanks for clarifying, although this seems to me more like a technical detail especially since prejudice against LGBT people is pretty high in India.

That is a true and very very sad fact

Well technically, being a homosexual is legal, but performing anal sex is illegal

Wasn't it legalized like 8 years ago ?

I have a feeling you're basing this off of preconceived notions of the entire "third world" rather than off of any research.

It's true that homosexuality is unfortunately very taboo in most of India, but people aren't being killed for it any more than LGBT people are being killed in the States.

I wasn't talking about present time (the book was written in 1977) and in any case I did not mean to say that LGBT killings are rampart in India, but they don't need to be a mass phenomenon to be a problem.

Dude, we are still struggling with dowry/witch burnings. we haven't yet progressed to LGBT killings. give us time. :(

we don't kill people for being gay retard.

Well, "The lord of the rings" was already taken

Sounds like a ride at Disney.

I don't see how.

The man inside me is a little bit better.

Book a faggots Has a nice ring to it

Not really. It's just not politically correct for today's sensitive tastes. It's simply referring to the shared experiences that only homosexual members of society have, hence the "World of".

Maybe she wasn't worried about phrasing it because she expects it to be read by adults with the emotional maturity to handle what she was saying, and to know what she meant.

It could also be a grabbing title to get the attention of people who have issues with the gay community. What is a bigot more likely to pick up and start reading, "The World of Homosexuals" or "Why we should all love gays and accept them"?

This woman, with all her brain power and critical thinking skills, probably didn't just drop the ball on the title of her book, is what I'm saying.

It sounds like it just doesn't translate well to English.

What makes you say that?

Whirled Homosexuals

That's because she wasn't in favor of 'tolerance' or sympathy.

What should it be? "Fodor's guide to San Francisco"?

The World of Homosexuals: Gaylords of Draenor expansion pack is doing pretty well, as far as I know.

She also read a book called Book of Numbers about math. Has anyone read it?

Apparently she did.

I sympathize with homosexuals because of all the social stigma against them. If the social stigmas went away I wouldn't give them any sympathy anymore.

I'm hoping for reincarnation...

Is this a new update for WoW?

Wow, what a novel concept. Accepting gays? Incredible beacon of morality!

Awesome sarcasm. This is laudably progressive coming from a woman, born in the 20s to an orthodox family, writing in India in the 70s. If you try to hold figures from the past up against modern moral standards, everyone will fall short. You will fall short to those judging you in a century (or even those judging you now, given that you're sitting on reddit being snide about a woman that seems to have been quite a great person).

[deleted]

Wow, what a novel concept. Accepting gays? Incredible beacon of morality!

You will fall short to those judging you in a century

I sometimes wonder what things we consider normal perspectives today that will be regarded the same way we regard a "normal" perspective about black people in the '20s

Probably cannabis legalization, gay rights, violence is fine but nudity is not.. religion will probably have less hold.

Man, typing all of this out.. I'm a lot more liberal than I thought.

You're my favorite

God damn. This was beautiful.

You...you have a way with words.

Yeah, I love how we are focusing on "accept da gays" instead of on this woman's actually amazing mathematical prowess.

Thank you, reddit liberals.

Actually we're focusing on both, but as long as you find something to hate, reddit conservatives.

I think we could learn a lot more than math from this woman.

That literally implies that writing a book about accepting gays and being a prodigy at math are at the same level.

You deluded fucks are hilarious. Thank god outside of the reddit hugbox, not everyone is retarded. :\^)

In 1977 it sure as hell was. You should give her more credit.

A disturbing percent of the population does think it's a novel concept. :(

Sorry to be pedantic. It's obvious what you're trying to say.

However, "novel" means "new/original" - not bad/radical/immoral/etc.

I'm aware. I do believe that there are people that think accepting homosexuals (or anyone "different" from the norm) is a novel idea. People who are so used to condemning homosexuals, that accepting them is something that feels very new. If you have not encountered a person like this, you are lucky.

Greek Geek must be a clueless 20-something with no concept of history or how the world was even just 10 years ago. Politicians would win elections on an anti-gay platform in the United States as recently as 2004.

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OP made a stupid comment, but why would they start a new account over such a "burn"? Who the hell cares? Oh no, their reputation amongst certain populations of Reddit has taken a minor setback, whatever will they DO?!

Nobody will even remember the username, I know I forgot it already.

And your own contribution to society is demonstrated by your point tally.

Wow, what a novel concept. Accepting gays? Incredible beacon of morality!

In case this gets deleted.

What the hell is this conversation?

Easy buddy, no need to annex a country over this...

Did someone say "annex a country"?

I might be able to help with that.

If my wife looked like her I too would consider fucking dudes

What an idiot comment to insult her physical appearance.

You have it backward. Women are the template iirc. Men are the ones that take their looks after women, not the other way around. A woman that looks like a man is still a woman. A man that looks like a woman is you.

If you had a wife she too would be fucking dudes.

Who doesn't accept gays?

Plenty of people. The fact that any gay man would feel that he had to marry a woman to fit in is one of many indicators.

uh, a woman who was lied to and married with a gay man who cheated on her with other men?

Does the book say he cheated on her. Many gay people who live in homophobic societies are in denial. It's possible he hadn't even admitted to himself that he was gay.

I haven't read the book though (I totally will now) so her case may not have been like that.

I asked WHO.

The GOP? A large portion of America? Many countries in the middle east? Many people scattered in probably every country in the world?

Large portion of america? Even countries where I've lived that it is "illegal", it isn't enforced because nobody cares. I think a "LARGE" portion of america is pushing it.

nearly half still oppose gay marriage. that's LARGE

Not trying to be argumentative, but In my experience it's not NEARLY that large (clearly I haven't been to every city in AMerica however). Do you happen to have a source for that number? I'm honestly curious if it's still seen that way.

looks like it's around 40% on more recent polls, but that's just about the current supreme court decision, so i'm sure some of the anti people just realize that times have changed and they've lost.

http://www.pollingreport.com/civil.htm

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So you want me to do what? Go to russia and try being gay?

No, Who's on first.

We can't learn shit from a corpse.

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It's about her.

What a strong reaction to an innocuous and completely relevant comment.

I want you to think deeply about this /u/KaribouLouDied, two big fat hairy biker dudes fuck each others brains out in the most depraved way possible. Through that act of felching, nipple clamps, ATM etc. a deeper feeling grows. Those dudes get gay married and move in next door to you. Most people are OK with this. I really want you to think about gay stuff and big Bears whips chains and collars that sort of thing.

Also, Barrack Obama, Socialism, a progressive income tax, tight corporate regulations, and environmentalism.

The only thing that made me rage was "progressive income tax" and "socialism".

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debbiedowner.gif

You can't be serious

in today's world

You completely ignore that the book was written in 1977, and in a country where full and complete acceptance of homosexuals isn't even commonplace "in today's world".

Also, what evidence do you have that her ability was solely the result of natural-born talents (or savantism), and not any techniques? Because reports from some people close to her seem to indicate that she did have actual methods (emphasis mine):

“It is sad that her techniques to simplify math were not used by educational institutions,” said D.C. Shivdev, a trustee of the Shakuntala Devi Educational Foundation Public Trust. “She strove to simplify math for students and help them get over their math phobia. It is a pity that her techniques died with her.”

I cant believe no one or even her - logged these techniques for reference, depressing.

She wrote a bunch of books: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/205422.Shakuntala_Devi

She was a household name in India. Google even did a doodle in her honour: http://www.google.com/doodles/shakuntala-devis-84th-birthday

There used to be newspaper ads about her books and she even used to to astrological consultations:
http://www.quora.com/How-was-Shakuntala-Devi-as-a-person https://bellurramki18.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/shakuntala-devi/

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I got her books as gifts too! Learn like 2 cool math tricks and never picked it up again.

thanks loads, was just doing the ole "assumption" stupidity thing, going by the wording of the OP that sound like these methods were lost!

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There was a dude who could do this who would render numbers into mental shapes; the shapes would emerge in his mind and he would have a subconscious association with the shape and a number. So every number had a shape. It was amazing. They actually had him forge some of the numbers into clay to demonstrate the shapes he would see, they were pretty fascinating. Obviously, something few to no other people do, but it was damn fascinating.

Thats Daniel Tammet I believe, and there's more than a few people who think he is a fraud. Very smart, yes, but a fraud as far as the way he claims to do math in his head with shapes instead of numbers. For example, when asked to describe the shape of a 4 digit number twice, about a month apart, he described very different shapes.

Devil's advocate: Why should it be the same?

... I really don't think this has to be explained. But here:

Round number times square number = round number with a square in it. If you suddenly have a round square number going full triangle oval on you, the calculation of round times oval doesn't make sense any more.

There's no way that a system so ingrained in your psyche that you can actually see numbers as something would be subject to change. Not one user of mnemonics (of which Tammett is one, the fraud) will tell you otherwise.

Also, considering that, he could've told us the Mnemonic Code he was using as if he was naturally seeing them instead of imprinting them himself. That'd make a more believable scam. Instead, he failed to remained consistent, because that's what often happens to liars.

While I agree that you are probably right, I still don't think it meets the burden of proof. If I meet someone who's name is David, I might remember that by mentally associating him with David Blaine. Another time, I might associate him with David Attenborough. And any system that might be used might evolve over time anyway.

All I'm saying is that a little more is needed to show shenanigans.

Well, I can agree with that, but what Tammett is saying is that seeing the numbers as shapes is helping him calculate. How he identifies numbers isn't relevant if they don't help him calculate. If they do help him calculate then they wouldn't or couldn't change, correct? If as you say his synesthesia is subject to context (which, mind you, synesthesia is actually famous for not being - please look at the Wiki for some test results), then his synesthesia is irrelevant to his being a savant.

So that's doubly indication that he's scamming us. :)

Alright, well, how does he actually do the math? Does he just have a calculator down his pants or something?

Mnemonics, algorithms. He's a practiced mentalist, not a savant. That makes his skills more impressive, but less marketable. He wanted to be marketable. There are 100s if not 1000s of people who can make those calculations. There are international competitions for them. None of those people claim to be Savants.

Maybe it depends on the context; like, depending on the operation he would look at it from a different angle?

a 4 digit number twice, about a month apart, he described very different shapes.

source? In the documentary "Brain Man" (on youtube) they made it a point to verify that his shapes were consistent.

In the book Moonwalking with Einstein, Josh Foer talks about meeting Daniel several times, and on two occasions two weeks apart, he asked him to describe the number 9,412. He says Daniel gave him two different descriptions of the number.

"The first time he said, 'There's blue in there because it starts with a nine, and a drifting motion as well, and kind of like a sloping as well.' Two weeks later, he said after a long pause 'It's a spotty number. There's spots and curves as well. It's actually a very complex number'."

The shapes of the numbers in his head could be n>3 dimensional, and he just described them from a different viewing angle.

Maybe, but the whole thing is already unusual to say the least, since I've never heard of anyone else doing math this way. But then to add on that the shapes are 4D would add on another level of difficulty. It seems more likely that he has memorized shapes for smaller numbers that he would encounter more, and avoids describing larger numbers unless directly asked about them.

Because he's visualizing numbers as shapes doesn't mean that it's always the same shape. The visualization may not be dependent on the properties of the shape, more on the symbol of what it represents in his mind in this calculation.

Also they could work on more than one level, like color.

He claims each number is always the same shape, and he does math in his head by overlapping the shapes to get new shapes which happen to be the answer.

That guy was extremely smart, but not in the way many people think. He's an extremely savy businessman, he realized if he simply made up a lot of mumbo jumbo synethsethia explanations and such that he could make millions, so he did.

In reality he's just pretty damn good at memory palaces. Still an impressive feat, but he's no savant or superhuman, his skills can actually be taught.

How do you fake learning conversational Icelandic in a week? Or are you saying the videos about him are fake as well?

Considering his talent for memorizing things, it wouldn't be that hard for him to memorize a couple of sentences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GXjPEkDfek

Watch the end of the video (around 2:35). He's responding to questions (in Icelandic) on a live TV show. Unless he knew exactly what he'd be asked and blindly answered using memorized sentences, I don't see how that can be faked.

I feel like I remember seeing a pretty good response to that in a previous post about the guy. But I'll abstain from responding because I'm not really knowledgable on the matter.

There are not that many phrases in small talk, and I was told by icelandics that although his responses were correct, they were quite general and very broad.

There are not that many phrases in small talk

What really? Try this in English:

A: Hello! Welcome to our show! So how do you like Iceland so far?

B: Your language has been a real challenge to learn.

A: Uh, yeah, OK, we'll get to that shortly, but how about your trip? What sites have you visited?

B: I feel like I only have a basic grasp of your language.

A: You got that right.

I maintain this would be basically impossible to pull off unless he knew the questions ahead of time in order, and memorized answer phrases in order.

Also, I think you mean "Icelanders", not "Icelandics".

It would be difficult, but nobody is denying that he is smart. By memorizing key words he could get a grasp of what was being said and use the right basic phrase.

Also, it's much easier to learn a language when you live in that country while learning it. Everything you do and see is icelandic, everyone talking around you in it, it's much more effective than the traditional classroom style of learning a language.

Daniel Tammet? Many skilled mnemonists say he is a skilled mnemonist playing to the gallery.

Synesthesia!

Specifically, Number-Form Synesthesia.

I associate every digit with a color, for reasons beyond my control, but it's never helped me except for memorizing things like sports scores.

For me: 1 = black, 2 = green, 3 = red, 4 = blue, 5 = red, 6 = brown, 7 = yellow, 8 = gray, 9 = yellow

And I do mix up my 3's and 5's and 7's and 9's

I can do that, each number is a shape, and I can even combine them to make other numbers ...

Regarding #3, more likely she independently discovered some of the same techniques and more, since she starting doing this sort of thing as a young child.

Source please: for her skills being based on or off vedic mathematics ??

Those techniques could absolutely have been usable by the general public. We use such techniques to program calculators and computers that everyone uses.

What black magic does a calculator use?

she was clearly a savant, so it's not like her techniques would have been immediately usable by the general public. still very helpful to understand, of course.

Disagree somewhat here. while she may have been a savant, she also relied a lot on simple trick and algorithms/methods for many such calculations. Many of these she documented in her books.

I remember being forced to read some of her books as a kid by my dad. didnt work. I still sucked at maths. :D

I dunno, I read a book "Figuring: the Joy of Numbers" by her when I was a kid, and I recall it having some techniques.

Was that... was that a math pun?

It seems to add up.

You have my undivided attention

They say making math puns is the first sine of madness.

It certainly has radical implications.

Why so series?

cos i'm just that way

i like pi

No need to go off on a tangent.

The square root of 69 is ate somethin'.

The whole thing is irrational

"you couldn't handle my undivided attention" - Dwight Schrute

Without the techniques, you only have a fraction of mine.

So Ive learned how these puns on reddit work you have to initiate them without realising it to get a positive result. Nuts.

Fun fact: the use of the word log in the recording sense has its origins in maritime navigation. To estimate the speed of a ship, sailors would toss a log overboard which was tied to a rope, and measure the length of rope released after a few seconds. The calculations were recorded in a log book.

there are plenty of books out there that teach mental math that no doubt have most of her techniques in them

There are many books available. Many science stream students do use them. And her mathematical puzzle books are very popular with engineering student. She remains very popular in India.

Her brain almost certainly did not treat numbers the way must people's do. Most mathematical savants (that are capable of answering questions about their ability, some aren't) report that different sets of numbers are remembered as scenes, or complex scents. Synesthesia is a common theme and that is not an ability that can be trained; you either have it or you don't. I doubt that sort of number crunching ability is something that can be learned without some sort of physical changes to the brain.

Yeah I was wondering about that, doing the background reading showed that she was unique.

I was watching a show (I think it was that Stan Lee super hero show about real life superheroes or something) about a guy who considered himself a human calculator. He could do crazy calculations faster than people could type them into a calculator.

He explained that it wasn't some crazy technique that he used, but it was just processed differently in his mind. They did some scans (MRI maybe? I don't remember) and they found that when he did mathematical computations, the parts of his brain that were stimulated were common with his sense of sight (as opposed to whatever part of the brain is usually stimulated when doing math). And he said he hadn't thought of it that way before, but doing math was as natural as seeing for him.

So likely, Devi wouldn't have been able to pass along her abilities because it wasn't technique that allowed her to calculate, it was probably the fact that her brain operated differently than other people.

Well the two aren't mutually exclusive. Someone who has a unique mental ability to process that type of information faster then average can also start to see patterns and ways of phrasing that type of information that allows the average person to do much better.

Her techniques wouldn't of made us her - but its possible for clowns such as myself who have always struggled to do well in formal math that perhaps they may of made it easier.

See I disagree. I think what really makes people like that special is a completely different ability to think, which simply wouldn't help us with standard logical processes. From what I understand, people like that are able to think about numbers and equations in the same way you and I can look at a square peg and immediately know it won't go into the round hole. No amount of training or rewiring is going to help you or me think like she does.

Your reasoning is fairly sound to me but i don't believe its incompatible with the notion that someone who has a very different mode of processing information could potentially gain insight into processing information in GENERAL - in a way others haven't. From there - with a sense of empathy and understanding of the average - someone as her could potentially use those insights to develop better teaching and practices techniques.

That's sort of my line of reasoning.

Can someone's whose colorblind teach you how to not see green?

Probably not but most colorblindness is caused by a deficiency in the cones in the eye not a problem in the cerebrum. The cerebrum is extremely plastic. A more pertinent question might be whether someone could learn to distinguish a color that is not named in their culture.

Well...could they?

okay, well that's not entirely true. Robert fountain(winner of the mental calculation world cup) picked it up as a hobby when he was a kid. in fact, if you go to the wiki page on mental calculators:

Some rare mental calculators are autistic savants, with a narrow area of great skill and poor mental development in other directions, but many are people of normal mental development who have simply developed advanced calculating ability. A good many are also experienced scientists, linguists, writers, and so on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_calculator

kind of irritating to see people dismiss it as "they're simply gifted".

in perspective, I know people who know Russian(a pretty complex language for native English speakers) as a second language. they can translate Dostoevsky into English quicker than I could even finish writing the sentence in English into a translator.

magnus carlsen- the best chess player in the world who's only in his 20s- was not a beast in chess from day one. he said himself he spent thousands of hours studying and playing, and yet people still insist he's simply gifted.

really I think how gifted you become in any field depends upon your motivation, attitude, and your approach to what you're trying to become good at.

It's pointless to speculate because we have no idea what her methods were, or how she might have explained the relationship between numbers.

I believe your assumption of her method is likely correct, but the conclusion that there is no way to train it is going too far.

Speed reading is accomplished with the same visual processing part of the brain you speak of. The way you train it is to distract or brute force past the part of the brain most people learned to read with; the speech center. If methods can be developed to d the same with math, I believe it is a possibility.

its possible for clowns such as myself who have always struggled to do well in formal math that perhaps they may of made it easier.

Barbara Oakley(PhD) actually wrote a great book on this(essentially, how to learn) that you can pick up on Amazon. Think it's called "A Mind for Numbers". I was a mathphobe- like her- for the longest time because I thought I simply wasn't good at it.

Bit of an idiotic perspective, considering we aren't good at anything until we really practice it consistently.

wouldn't of made us better

wouldn't have made us better

Sorry, but I just had to point it out. I think it's a silly mistake many of us often make, which we can easily fix if we take the initiative. No offence :)

Considering how polite you pointed it out i'm more than happy to have my grammar corrected.

Ahh thanks bro. Many times people just take offence even when the intention is not to ridicule :)

To a limited extent. If there is a common recurring pattern this can be taught (but in this case we probably already know the technique). However it's more likely a series of highly interrelated patterns that vary highly on the numbers and desired operation, and knowing which pattern applies is the magic. Thus those "blind" to identifying the pattern on a per problem basis likely have little to gain. Some level of pattern identification can be taught but I think a lot is left to natural ability. If you don't have it I'm not sure the brain can be shaped to change that. If it could that would have profound implications in math, computer science, economics, and even just everyday life. If the average person was competent in college level statistics and probability... So many bad financial and life decisions are made because basic intuition is horribly bad at anything around probability.

To further digress, another limitation in this regard stems around the "slow brain", i.e. the rational, logic-based part of the brain. Using this not only takes energy, but if used for sustained periods of time essentially causes pain (something of a simplification). People's ability to tolerate this pain is directly correspondent to their ability for self control, academic success, and financial well being (moreso than IQ or most other metrics). There are techniques and ways to build up tolerance, but lots of people basically live with what they're dealt with.

tl;dr: the brain is highly interesting. Read "thinking fast and slow" for more info on this kinda stuff

Her techniques wouldn't of made us her

What?

Her techniques would not of made us into her. They would not of given us her abilities. That was not what i was trying to argue would of been possible.

When most people get their wires crossed they just end up with a foot fetish

it was probably the fact that her brain operated differently than other people.

It was probably just that most people aren't taught how to do math visually. It's not that hard.

Recently they've changed the way kids are taught math - it used to be the goal was to get kids to be able to quickly and accurately do things like multiplication using a pencil and paper, but that's kind of redundant since everyone has a computer with them at all times. It really was a skill people would need before calculators became widely available.

Savant autism type?

One of the most famous ones pictured numbers as shapes and large numbers as mountains. When multiplied the shapes converged into the new number.

Edit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Kim Peek? (ie the Rain Man)

They didn't die with her! She wrote countless books on her techniques and memory strategies!

I assumed that the quote was alluding to the fact that her techniques typically aren't taught in math courses.

What, she never bothered to even write it down?

She did, but they burnt all her books

How convenient.

damn anyone know how she did it? what she used? would def like to try to learn a little bit

Here's a method from earlier in the thread

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2taeog/til_shakuntala_devi_an_indian_mental/cnx8zde

She died with her simple mathematical techniques? Why didn't she ever write a book or something so the knowledge could still be with us. We could have all learned how to do these insane calculations.

I think her technique was just just, "Make 10 from 916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771"

I have a pretty good feeling that, if we were teaching her techniques, they'd be all over Facebook with "Wtf is this new math! That's not how we learned it!"

I know of a math professor at Harvey mudd I can't remember his name who knows how to do the date thing.

There is a trick to it. A formula.

So ways to do things like this are not lost

It's the doomsday algorithm and was invented by John Conway. It's really rather simple though doing it quickly takes a lot of practice.

As someone who has a math phobia, this is really sad. :/

However, she was disqualified because she didn't show her work.

This always pissed me off in school. I can do the math faster in my head than on paper, why would I bother writing it out?

Showing proof of how you arrived at the answer confirms you understand what is happening. It demonstrates your ability and comprehension.

It also allows the teacher to instruct you, if you did make a mistake.

Or, to make you run out of time.

Time management is a good skill to have.

It's mainly so you can catch mistakes. People make mistakes often so by writing it down you can always go back to see where you went wrong. It was mandatory in school because not only does it help you, but the teacher can look through and see where most of the students make mistakes.

It's also way harder to cheat without getting caught if you also have to reproduce your neighbour's method without making it too obvious.

At that point, just do it yourself.

even if you don't catch the mistake, it helps

went from an F to a B on my first statics test by getting partial credit on a problem by proving that i had dropped a variable and the work was sound.

in high school though - never did that crap. kinda famously in my school for math skills and not doing homework, showing my work. the worst was in our AP class test, finished first, did the bonus question, turned in at sat down. friend asked about the bonus so i took out a piece of paper, wrote out all the steps and gave it to him. found out later that paper got around the class (not sure if anyone did it on their own - everyone who told me had no solution). everyone got credit but me, for not showing my work

My teachers, after giving a test, never went back and tell us where we made mistakes so we could work on it.

But there has to be a limit to how much that is expected. For many who have intuitive understandings of quantities and numerical interactions, they are able to see what others have to calculate. And there is a real danger that by forcing this on such students, you will prevent their natural abilities from ever developing.

To them, it's like this. Imagine you put a coffee mug on the table and ask them to tell you what it is.

Kid: "It's a coffee mug."

Teacher: "No no, that's not enough! I want you to PROVE your answer by showing your work step by step. Describe each shape separately, how they connect to each other, and why the final answer adds up to a coffee mug."

Kid: "I don't know. It's a fucking coffee mug."

What is a complex question to you might already be a finished solution to their eyes.

That happens to me in maths and imo it's not maths if you can't show it/prove it. That's philosopby.

Because in real life STEM fields you don't work alone, and you don't just do your work once. You do multiple drafts over the course of say a month, each one is triple checked by other people.

Your work is checked much more in real life because 90% isn't acceptable, 100% is your only option.

This is the way it has to be done to prevent things like bridges from collapsing or airplanes blowing up/falling apart,

In algebra it's to show that you actually understand the method and used that method. Other than that it learns you to have a very clear understanding of what the fuck you are doing, removes the possibility of accidentally ending up with the right answer and it makes it harder to cheat / just use your TI.

What's the subreddit where people point out other people using opportunities to brag about their mathematical/sexual/financial betterness?

No, I honestly did terrible in highschool. Yes, I could do math in my head, but I had such a hard time understanding a lot of it, that I almost failed algebra 1.

Real life example of a Mentat

Take that, thinking machines!

We are machines, just made out of organic chemistry.

That always struck me as one of the weirder things about their universe. They could have all sorts of amazing technology to allow interstellar flight, full body suits for inhospitable environments and all sorts of technical marvels... but they drew the line at processing. I understand the reasons given as to why... but it's still a strange way of splitting acceptable technology from unacceptable and the results are equally strange.

It's a great way to explore Sci-fi outside the traditional themes. Most sci fi has some sort of AI, Dune just tried to do things a bit differently, in a very great new way!

We are meat machines.

That's what I was thinking. Now we just need to perfect interstellar travel.

Control the spice, control the galaxy.

the spice must flow

heat.. upon heat.. UPON HEAT

Bout to get my melange on

http://imgur.com/wHCbYxS

The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it

Someone call James Cromwell.

seriously why are we still not capable of FTL with these kind of people in the world

Because physics, and a general lack of spice flow, would be my theory.

Why the hell does the article use Piter, and not Thufir, for a picture?

The page wasn't big enough to contain his almighty eyebrows.

Piter died too quickly. His character was awesome. I feel that a lot more could have been done with him.

If Piter had not been killed by Leto in that confrontation, he would have been whacked by Baron Harkonnen soon after.

he also features in the prequel-books IIRC

Immediately thought of Mentats from Fallout.

"Mentats are most useful for characters with low Intelligence and Perception, as they grant a useful bonus for both these SPECIAL stats. The downside however, is that they're addictive."

Which are in fact named after the characters in Dune.

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Never made the connection, it seems obvious now though, mentats in fallout are spice tablets

Immediately thought of Mentats from Fallout.

The term mentat comes from the book Dune. In the universe described by dune computers are no longer trusted, instead they use people who are specially trained as a sort of human computer. These are called Mentats.

Same, I'll never forget that blinding light and NNNNEWWWWW sound from withdrawal

I was wondering why it had its own wikipedia article...

Her line will rise in prominence after the Butlerian Jihad.

I've often held my wife is a Benne Jezzerit so if should contact her family and try to mingle the bloodlines so we can achieve the Qizzat Haderat.

Ed: sadly my iphone does not have Dune names in it's autocorrect library

Something's telling me that your exposure to Dune was via audiobook.

"My name is a killing...bird?"

Mine was too, pretty much every spelling was different than I imagined. To be fair though the audiobooks are really well done!

They contacted one of Frank's children and asked if Frank had left behind any notes about the Dune universe. Turns out Frank had a shit load of notes about pronunciation and the like. They talk about it in a behind the scenes video about the making of the audio book.

Here's the video I'm talking about.

I haven't listened to the audio books yet, but I've heard they're pretty well made.

Quiz at had a rut

Hah, funny you should mention that. I did actually read it years ago in paperback. BUT, I also picked up an audiobook copy of it more recently and listened to it. Dummy that I am I guess I didn't pay close enough attention to the title and it turns out what I had was an audiobook of the original story, which was fairly different and had the duke as the primary character with Paul as more or less an afterthought. It's actually pretty good, and at the end it included a bunch of other apocryphal snippets about the jihad and early early history of Harkonens on Calliban and alternate versions of other books.

Called "Memories of Dune" or something like that. I can't seem to find it on google right now (but I haven't really tried)

Try "Bene Gesserit" and "Kwisatz Haderach".

Bonus meme.

Quizmaster Hatrack?

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read Dune

I did, did you? It's "Bene Gesserit" in the books.

....wow. You just slaughtered all the spelling. I'm assuming you've only seen the movie, then?

Lynch or Sci-Fi, what do we think? I've seen them both so many times...

JODOROWSKYS DUNE !!!!

I've seen neither. I thought there was only one. I've only read the books several times.

See the Lynch film ASAP, well maybe see Jodorowsky's first. Yeah see see the documentary ASAP, then immediately see Lynch.

The sci-fi miniseries is great too but it's pretty long. Also, make sure you get the extended Lynch version. You'll be so happy.

I've also read the book several times. Love those movies, I mean, not like they're great art, but they're pretty neat.

Dont listen to him, the lynch movie does no justice to the books. He maKes the fremen look like weak bitches. The long version does not miss a detail from the book for the most part. Only downside the long version....no Patrick Stewart

Ah, whoops. No I read the book I just never really spent much time memorizing the names in it. Let's see how I do with the rest (by memory, no cheating):

Gurney Hallek, the Joungleur

Duke Leto Atreides

Reverend Mother (ok that one is cheating)

Melange

Arrakis

Harkonens

That one dude with the purple lips (pretty sure that's not how it's spelled)

Fremen

Purple lips is the Suk doctor Wellington Yueh

No it's not. It's a sign of being a Mentat -- it's either Thufir Hawat or Liter de Vries.

Hm, I think we are thinking of different things. In the book, Yueh is described as a purple lipped man with a long mustache and his hair in a silver ring. BUT Mentats are described as cranberry/purple lipped due to their consumption of the Sapho juice. So he is either talking about Yueh or Piter or Thufir.

I thought it was the mentat guy.

Bene Gesserit*

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Is it just because I have been reading Dune, or are there more Dune references popping up on Reddit in the last few days? First Lego, God Emperor of Poop, now a real-life Mentat. What comes next?

me too, how odd...

I've just finished God Emperor and I'm experiencing the same thing.

Dune is mainstream though - I've noticed if it's brought up online it will usually cause a dogpile of references and discussion.

Lots of people probably did what I did:

Read the title and came in here and CTRL+F "mentat"

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion...

Real life is....a real polymath.

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Came here looking for this comment lol

Fuck that you altered my mood, I'm thinking of MARC Mentat now

Indians + spice.

That's no mentat. This is a mentat!

I used to love, just LOVE her math puzzle books when I was a kid. "Puzzles to puzzle you" is the name of one of them, if you're interested.

Here's one, just for fun:

Supposing a clock takes 7 seconds to strike 7, how long does it take for the same clock to strike 10?

Ok, please explain why it wouldn't be 10 seconds.

First stroke is at 0 seconds. So it takes 10 1/2 seconds to strike 10.

This is what I would've had as the answer.

amangang3 and CranialZealot each give interesting answers.

Personally I was thinking: 3 hours and 3 seconds, assuming it's now only 7 o'clock.

That's just an ambiguously worded question then.

Yes, which is what many puzzles are.

Not math puzzles. If they're worded ambigously, they're shit. Getting the solution should be hard, not understanding the question.

Feel like if understanding the question is hard it's more just a riddle than a puzzle.

Not math puzzles.

In which case the question arises: is it a math puzzle?

Dude. The woman isn't Jesus. She gets to make mistakes too.

...what?

It's supposed to be a math puzzle but it's not worded well enough, or rather, well defined.

I suppose I agree that a poorly-phrased math puzzle isn't so much a 'different kind of puzzle' as just annoying, yes.

I guess I'm saying that what matters is the intent.

'Strike' refers to the bell/gong being hit to alert you of the time. It is not referring to the second (or hour) hand moving around the clock. You can rephrase the question as:

Assuming the duration beetween chimes is equal every time and counting from the moment of the first strike, if the total duration between strike 1 and strike 7 is 7 seconds, what is the total duration between strike 1 and strike 10?

Remember, we are looking for strike 10, we don't care how long the sound resonates afterwards. We are also timing it from the first strike (which occurs at 0.00 seconds).

For this reason, we actually need to find out the duration between strikes first, then we only end up counting 9 'durations'.

So:

  • Amount of seconds / Amount of Durations = Duration Length (in seconds)
  • Duration Length * New Amount of Durations = New Total Duration

In this case:

  • 7 / 6 = 1.1666...
  • 1.1666... x 9 = 10.5

Edit: clarified wording.

Thank you for your succinct explanation.

I greatly appreciated the clarity.

Cos it's already at 7. So 3. 7+3=10? Just a guess.

It would be 3 hours and 7 seconds. It's still a normal clock, just the time was 6:59.53

At least that's how I interpreted it.

I think it would be 3 seconds, because the the clock is already 7.

[removed]

Just going to say, to avoid italicising when trying to use * symbols, either put four spaces at the start of the line to treat it like code

like this

Or put a backslash like this \* so the star shows up like this *

3, the same clock

Wouldn't it just be three seconds?

If it is the same clock and it has already struck seven times, and it takes 1 second per strike, then there are only 3 strikes left to get to ten.

It would be three seconds, the clock is already at 7 so it only takes three more seconds. I think.

Well if it's seven seconds to 7, 10 is three hours and seven seconds away...

3 hours and 7 seconds?

I'm with you on this one. Although, I really have no idea what the question is actually asking. I just know for certain that a clock is involved.

3 hours and 3 seconds?

If it's the same clock, without changing it, 3 seconds?

Here's one, just for fun:

Ain't nothing fun about this

Psh, that's nothing. I bet she can't explain how to get 10 by adding 8 and 5.

Simple - you're in base 13.

I get 0.

Isn't that mod 13? Not base 13?

Could be. Got a masters in maths but it's been 3 years and I've become mathtarded.

You mean base 10.

Good joke but it went over some heads

Maybe they just disliked the joke, which, as is custom, warrants a downvote.

Haha yeah I loved it it was super funny :) ^^Could ^^someone ^^pls ^^explain?

In base 13 when you write 10 it would actually mean 13 (the numbers 10, 11 and 12 would be new characters). So if base 13 was standard, we'd actually call it base 10. Funny stuff.

(the numbers 10, 11 and 12 would be new characters)

Specifically: a, b, and c.

Similar to how hexadecimal numbers go 0-F.

Every base is base 10.

That doesn't really work with numbers over 10 though. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 10!! I understand the joke but guys come on.

For bases over base 10 you use different characters to represent those numbers. For example, base 16 is 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,a,b,c,d,e,f,10 so that problem is avoided.

And when you run out of letters, you start using lowercase/uppercase. And when you run out of those, you use special characters, as is customary for base 64.

But it was 13 not d

Base ¤ you mean, 13 is its own character.

If it was base 13 wouldn't the answer be C?

If you're in base 10, the second digit is the 10s place and it starts at 10 base 10. If you're in base 13, the second digit is the 13s place and it starts at 13 base 10.

12 base 10 in base 13 would be "B" though if we are using the same scheme as hex. In base 14, 13 would be C.

Wouldn't it be d?

a = 10, b= 11, c = 12, d = 13?

No, you take 2 out of 5 and add that to 8, 8+2=10

Nobody makes jokes in base 13.

All your base are belong to us.

All about that base.

Bass guitar.

Bass drum.

Run the bases.

The base of all knowledge.

The base class is System.Object.

Mix a base and an acid.

8 + 5 =10 + 3

There, I found 10 for you.

3

Half Lief 3 confirmed!!

What? NO MATHEMATICIAN WOULD AGREE WITH THIS!

Well, I am a math teacher and I agree.

Like I said, no mathematician.

really, you set yourself up?

that thread was full of snobby "mathematicians"

What, you can't make 10?

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand this joke, those who don't and those who weren't expecting this to be in base-3.

I understood this reference!

It's just another way to say "Solve for X"

Dank reference brah

I still don't get that. Stupid new math. And I have kids in elementary school. they're screwed if they think I can help.

The purpose is to teach kids how to do math the way most people learn to do mental math on their own. You have the addition fact of 8+5 memorized, so it seems stupid to you to take an extra step to make 10 on the way to finding the answer of 13. For a kid who doesn't have it memorized, the easiest way to find the answer is to first make a number that they probably have all the relevant facts for memorized: 10. So first you find 10, then finding the answer is really easy.

How do we find 10? We break the 5 into 2+3 [8+2+3], use the 2 to bump 8 up to 10, and end up with [10+3].

If you have other questions I'd be happy to try and help you understand "new math," I know it can be a bit counterintuitive at first. It really does work quite well in the classroom though, with kids who don't have an adult's "I ALREADY KNOW A WAY TO DO THAT, THIS IS SO STUPID" bias.

Can you?

If you are base 13, yes you can. Once you change the base from 10 (what we all know and love) counting goes 123456789 (insert unique characters for ten, eleven, twelve, you can't use the old ones because 10 means 13 now, 11 means 14, 12 means 15 etc. ) 10.

Except this wasnt a class trying to teach bases. Hes referencing a post where the teacher is trying to teach the kids how to complete 10s but the wording was weird

I know. But in the context of "can you add 8 and 5 to get 10" bases are perfectly acceptable to bring up.

8+5 = 8+2+3 = 10+3 = 13

Of course not. I was taught math in a logical way, not like this Common Core BS.

Just FYI, this New Math stuff has absolutely, positively nothing to do with Common Core. Common Core says at what grade levels kids should have what skills. It does not stipulate how to teach those skills. It is a set of standards, not a curriculum. There is an enormous difference.

The New Math movement predates Common Core. It is also perfectly logical, you just don't understand it because you never learned it, and now have a lovely set of biases against it because it is different from the way you learned to do math. It works quite well in the classroom, with kids who don't share your biases.

Carrying method is pretty illogical. Finding a base to go off of makes things a lot simpler. It's how this math challenged person is at all able to calculate numbers mentally, and that's saying something because I'm not the best with math. At all. And I didn't do common core so...maybe it's just a method people use naturally, and they wanted to use it to help other people.

tl;dr Many parts of common core are stupid to people who are too lazy to understand their usefulness, but not too lazy to complain about what they don't understand.

I absolutely understand how common core practices are useful to some students, but the method by which they're taught is what I disagree with. I think all methods should be covered and hopefully one method sticks with a child. The theory that all students should know all methods (even those they don't find natural to use) is stupid and inefficient to me.

tl;dr i know you are but what am i

Eh, I like having options. I think it's cool they're giving that to students. I was someone who wasn't, and I was told it can only be a certain way (having gone to about three different elementary schools and two different high schools). It's just not good for people who have a hard time with stuff like this so I'm all for giving children some different ideas about how they can calculate different numbers. Common core might be more popular if people learned about it on par with the children--seems like a bunch of old timers complaining about things not being like they were when they still wore onions on their belt.

All methods are covered. Kids learn the traditional algorithm. Anyone telling you they don't is either full of shit or lives in a school district with really bad curriculum, and should go talk to their school board. Once all methods have been taught, kids are usually free to use whatever method they want. It's the homework that dictates which method to use (because the kids are practicing one method to learn it) that gets parents' dicks in a twist.

I can recite pi out to two decimal points, so I've got that going for me.

Let's try for three... 3.14....shit

"How I wish I could calculate pi"

3 letters in 'how', 1 in 'I', 4 in 'wish', etc... 3.141592

This is the handiest least handy thing I've ever read.

/r/ShittyLifeProTips

[deleted]

/r/learnuselesstalents

This is anything but shitty. Unnecessary maybe.

How often does this username turn up results?

I'm Dogecoin rich but tit poor.

Want some male tits to make you feel better?

Welcome from /r/learnuselesstalents

Definitely. You want me to remember a mnemonic as if thats easier than remembering 3.14 ?

It helps you remember it to 6 digits not 2. Still I think just remembering 3.141592 is easier......and also pointless.

Pi is three as far as i care. Unless it's Math.pi, and I'm programming something, 3 is good enough

Welcome to Utah. Or Kansas perhaps.

Let me just count the letters in calculate.

I've had 3.14159 memorized for so long you'd think I'd have picked up that 2 by now

Why? I just use 3 for pi. If i need it from memory, three is a close enough approximation

I learned "How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics," which gets you out to 3.14159265358979.

[deleted]

Ahh....dat engineer thirst.

Never change reddit.

Is this where I write /r/nocontext ?

[deleted]

Me too. Way easier method, imo. (much less error-prone, for one).

Yup, I learned 3,141592653589793238462643383279502884197 by rhythm

Damn that's good. In middle school our math professor was giving extra credit depending on how much you could memorize and you got like a whole letter grade if you could do 100 digits. I think a couple kids actually did it.

I made a bet with a friend when we just started middle school on who could memorize more.

She managed 140, I just 110 or so.

Even today she still knows 90, and I still know 40 (we are both in college now).

That's great that you were self motivated like that.

55.54346149314276?

It would take me much longer to count the letters in that sentence than to memorize that many digits of pi

Aaand now i need a drink

I've never understood mnemonics. Ive always found it easier to just remember the order of things as-is.

I memorised pi to 42 decimal places just by repeating it to myself over and over. Youll have to take my word that im not copy-pasting this but: 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971

Shit. Forgot 69 on the end. So i guess only 40 decimal places. (i did originally know it to 40 but i added 2 more so that it wouldnt have a rounding error on the end. Since the 43rd digit is less than 5)

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I just straight up memorized a bunch of it when I was in high school, for no good reason. Like 100+ digits. I can still remember a lot of it even 12 years later.

Poe, E. Near a Raven

Midnights so dreary, tired and weary
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
"This", I whispered quietly, "I ignore".

Perfectly, the intellect remembers: the ghostly fires, a glittering ember.
Inflamed by lightning's outbursts, windows cast penumbras upon this floor.
Sorrowful, as one mistreated, unhappy thoughts I heeded:
That inimitable lesson in elegance - Lenore -
Is delighting, exciting...nevermore.

Ominously, curtains parted (my serenity outsmarted),
And fear overcame my being - the fear of "forevermore".
Fearful foreboding abided, selfish sentiment confided,
As I said, "Methinks mysterious traveler knocks afore.
A man is visiting, of age threescore."

Taking little time, briskly addressing something: "Sir," (robustly)
"Tell what source originates clamorous noise afore?
Disturbing sleep unkindly, is it you a-tapping, so slyly?
Why, devil incarnate!--" Here completely unveiled I my antedoor--
Just darkness, I ascertained - nothing more.

While surrounded by darkness then, I persevered to clearly comprehend.
I perceived the weirdest dream...of everlasting "nevermores".
Quite, quite, quick nocturnal doubts fled - such relief! - as my intellect said,
(Desiring, imagining still) that perchance the apparition was uttering a whispered "Lenore".
This only, as evermore.

Silently, I reinforced, remaining anxious, quite scared, afraid,
While intrusive tap did then come thrice - O, so stronger than sounded afore.
"Surely" (said silently) "it was the banging, clanging window lattice."
Glancing out, I quaked, upset by horrors hereinbefore,
Perceiving: a "nevermore".

Completely disturbed, I said, "Utter, please, what prevails ahead.
Repose, relief, cessation, or but more dreary 'nevermores'?"
The bird intruded thence - O, irritation ever since! -
Then sat on Pallas' pallid bust, watching me (I sat not, therefore),
And stated "nevermores".

Bemused by raven's dissonance, my soul exclaimed, "I seek intelligence;
Explain thy purpose, or soon cease intoning forlorn 'nevermores'!"
"Nevermores", winged corvus proclaimed - thusly was a raven named?
Actually maintain a surname, upon Pluvious seashore?
I heard an oppressive "nevermore".

My sentiments extremely pained, to perceive an utterance so plain,
Most interested, mystified, a meaning I hoped for.
"Surely," said the raven's watcher, "separate discourse is wiser.
Therefore, liberation I'll obtain, retreating heretofore -
Eliminating all the 'nevermores' ".

Still, the detestable raven just remained, unmoving, on sculptured bust.
Always saying "never" (by a red chamber's door).
A poor, tender heartache maven - a sorrowful bird - a raven!
O, I wished thoroughly, forthwith, that he'd fly heretofore.
Still sitting, he recited "nevermores".

The raven's dirge induced alarm - "nevermore" quite wearisome.
I meditated: "Might its utterances summarize of a calamity before?"
O, a sadness was manifest - a sorrowful cry of unrest;
"O," I thought sincerely, "it's a melancholy great - furthermore,
Removing doubt, this explains 'nevermores' ".

Seizing just that moment to sit - closely, carefully, advancing beside it,
Sinking down, intrigued, where velvet cushion lay afore.
A creature, midnight-black, watched there - it studied my soul, unawares.
Wherefore, explanations my insight entreated for.
Silently, I pondered the "nevermores".

"Disentangle, nefarious bird! Disengage - I am disturbed!"
Intently its eye burned, raising the cry within my core.
"That delectable Lenore - whose velvet pillow this was, heretofore,
Departed thence, unsettling my consciousness therefore.
She's returning - that maiden - aye, nevermore."

Since, to me, that thought was madness, I renounced continuing sadness.
Continuing on, I soundly, adamantly forswore:
"Wretch," (addressing blackbird only) "fly swiftly - emancipate me!"
"Respite, respite, detestable raven - and discharge me, I implore!"
A ghostly answer of: "nevermore".

" 'Tis a prophet? Wraith? Strange devil? Or the ultimate evil?"
"Answer, tempter-sent creature!", I inquired, like before.
"Forlorn, though firmly undaunted, with 'nevermores' quite indoctrinated,
Is everything depressing, generating great sorrow evermore?
I am subdued!", I then swore.

In answer, the raven turned - relentless distress it spurned.
"Comfort, surcease, quiet, silence!" - pleaded I for.
"Will my (abusive raven!) sorrows persist unabated?
Nevermore Lenore respondeth?", adamantly I encored.
The appeal was ignored.

"O, satanic inferno's denizen -- go!", I said boldly, standing then.
"Take henceforth loathsome "nevermores" - O, to an ugly Plutonian shore!
Let nary one expression, O bird, remain still here, replacing mirth.
Promptly leave and retreat!", I resolutely swore.
Blackbird's riposte: "nevermore".

So he sitteth, observing always, perching ominously on these doorways.
Squatting on the stony bust so untroubled, O therefore.
Suffering stark raven's conversings, so I am condemned, subserving,
To a nightmare cursed, containing miseries galore.
Thus henceforth, I'll rise (from a darkness, a grave) -- nevermore!
-- Original: E. Poe
-- Redone by measuring circles

I only memorized the first verse, but it's a start.

To state the obvious, this was not written by me. More info here

Is this Numberwang? Close? No?

It's Wangernum.

Holy shit. That is amazing.

Can someone please math check this one? I see the first few digits...

Are all those letters really in line with the exact iterations of pi?

EDIT: I changed the script a bit to check the outcome, and it seems that it's not right after 33 words.

EDIT2: I think it's because of the apostrophe in "chamber's", which the script turns into two words instead of one. Meh, I'm bored now.

EDIT3: 10 letter words count as 0...

EDIT4: It fails at "Fearful" (the 96th word), because the 96th decimal should be ~~2~~1.

EDIT5: Captain's log, stardate today. It works. Turtles all the way down etc.

I think it does to some extent. I wrote a small python script:

text = open("poe.txt").read()

char_list = []

for char in text:
    if not char.isalnum():
        char = " "
    char_list.append(char)

number_string = ""
for word in "".join(char_list).split():
    number_string += str(len(word) % 10)

print number_string
print len(number_string)

pi = open("pi.txt").read()

for i in range(len(number_string)):
    if number_string[i] != pi[i]:
        print i
        break

That gave this output:

31415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749 44592307816406286208998628034825342170679821480865132823066 47093844609550582231725359408128481174502841027019385210555 96446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831 65272019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491427 37245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903 60013305305488204665213841469519415116094330572703657595919 53092186117381932611793105185480744623799627495673518857527 24892279381830194912983367336244065664308602394946395224737 19070217986094370277053921717629317675238467481846766940532 00056812714526356082778577134275778960917363717872146844090 12249534301465495853710507922796892589235420199561212902196

0864034418159

I don't think it's a perfect match, I think it starts to go wrong pretty soon. That could also be because I'm doing it wrong, though.

I know about 300. It stops workings around "sound and disturbing" of the first paragraph. That whole line should be "279502884197". It has the 2795 but then disturbing, which is 10, and then it continues with 2884197 16

93993751.

Unless you're supposed to ignore the 1 and just take the 0 in the 10, then it continues to work for a bit.

I think the 10 letter words are supposed to work for 0's now that I see more of the poem, since glittering is supposed to be 0 as well.

Right, I'll try that. Give me a minute.

EDIT: Ha, now it only fails after 95 words. Let's see what's up with that. EDIT2: It's just wrong there. 96th decimal should be ~~2~~1, 96th word is "Fearful."

it still works, forevermore is 11 letters, and that whole part is 5342"11"7067.

Ah, but in that case, sadly my program can't decide when it should be the number of letters, or the number of letters modulo 10. Both cases appear, I think.

I know some of these words. Lol, would you mind explaining what the difference is. I would look it up and learn but that'd be too much research on work time :/

What I meant was that my program doesn't know how to decide when a word of 11 characters should be 1 or 11, because apparently 10 should be 0. So it would make sense that 11 is 1, 12 is 2 etc. "Modulo 10" means "take the remainder when you divide by 10."

Yea I figured it out when i re read your reply. Is there no way to change that since there are no 12 letter words representing 2? Like a way to say: All 10 letter words = 0, and all 11 letter words = 1, 1 ? That seems to be the way it is written. No tricky business in between.

Oh, sure, that's easy. I'll see if I have time to check that tomorrow.

Yep, that worked. 733 decimals, according to my code.

Nice. Great job! I love reddit. 2 minds from who knows where, come together to solve a problem with math and science! You did most of the work, though.

"Work" may be overstating it a bit ;)

I actually did this while I was at work, because I had nothing to do while setting up a new computer. But have an internet-five anyway, because you're right about reddit/the internet.

Well I assumed it wasn't too complicated and that you did it at work, but still. To the average reddit user, nowadays anyways, programming is still foreign, so it did look like work. Now I want to learn python, or C++ and get me a good job, lol. Thanks for the inspiration!

I think it helps my job mostly comes down to programming anyway, so writing small programs like that takes about as much time as it takes to type them out. Being able to code is awesome, go for it!

It just seems so foreign to me, almost daunting. But I will give it a try! Thanks!

So I am at work, so I could only do up till 200 digits. Lenore on the 5th paragraph is the 200th digit. I have confirmed that 11 letters words count as 1 1 , and 10 letter words only count as a 0.

Edit: Digits to digit

Any chance that pi was slightly miscalculated when he wrote it, hence the mistake at 96?

Could be, but according to wikipedia, at least 500 decimals were known by the late 19th century, and the first 100 by the start of the 18th century.

Okay, I wrote up a Java program to check, and I can confirm that the poem is accurate all the way to the end! The source is messy and I didn't bother optimizing or anything like that, but I'll post a download to it if you want to see for yourself...

Yeah, I modified my code to only handle 10 as an exception, now it works for all 733 decimals that are in there.

Fucking Lenore... Almost as bad as Erin...

At least she isn't as bad as fucking Jenny.

Whats this? I mean what version?

According to Google, that poem represents the first 740 digits of pi.

If it were 22 words longer, it would reach the Feynman point.

I wrote a little program in another post that verified it, but according to that it's only 721 decimals, and it fails at the 96th one.

It.s E A Poe rewritten?

I must have read a different version because I remember the first verse being completely different.

upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore.

This is a rewrite of the original poem to follow pi

Oh sorry I didn't realise, that's really cool!

Relevant

I've only memorized the first line. :(

Αεί ο Θεός ο Μέγας γεωμετρεί, το κύκλου μήκος ίνα ορίση διαμέτρω, παρήγαγεν αριθμόν απέραντον, καί όν, φεύ, ουδέποτε όλον θνητοί θα εύρωσι.

Honestly, this is harder for me than remembering 3.141592.

I memorized shakespeare;
"to be or not to be is that a question".

That last number should be 3 if you stop at that many decimals. The next decimal is a 6, so you round up.

I will still get it wrong as I would write pi as pie

Ive found that for every year since Ive first learnt about pi I memorise one extra digit. 3.141592 is where Im at so far, only fate knows what the next year heralds for me...

I think 3.1416 is easier to remember; at least for me.

How I wish I could masterize pi.

Ah! Thanks! That'll be useful for when I use my graphic calculator.

Easier to just memorize 3.1415926

and that's all I feel I'll ever need.

although now I'm gonna try to add that 5359

It's way easier to remember the number alone. I've remembered 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197 Keep repeating and then when you have some digits memorized add another three or four and keep working. Some people have memorized entire books worth of pi's digits.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just remember the digits rather than the sentence and mnemonic rule?

[Pi is exactly 3!] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V98soOyQWKY)

So much simpler when we round down.... >>

I can do 5.

3.14159

Ha! beat ya!

I have 12.

3.141592653589

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I'd say it's rather pointless after 3 digits.

Maybe even 1.

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14131034822769306247435363256916078154781811528436679570611086

I memorized all of this when I was a wee babe.

You sonuva...!

Shit isn't a number, you god damn liar.

"Shit isn't a number I ain't ever heard of.
Say shit again.
I dare you, I double dare you!"

Fuck it, I just round up to 4.

2(4) r² - This is how we figure out the bigness of circler thingies in the south!

bro it's easy

third digit after the decimal is fifteen

In all honestly, the furthest I could remember without spending more time than I'd like to admit was 3.14159265358979, but I spent ~a day trying to remember it when I was ~16.

I was like, pi? That's easy 4.3... sheeeeet.

At least you started off on the right foot, lol.

No, the left one.

Here's my go, i'll probably fuck up somewhere 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510

I get bored sometimes

Too many numbers to doubke-check, so I'll just take you on your word for it.
;P

three fourteen fifteen ...at least got to four.

Pleb. True gentlemen and scholars memorize the golden ratio. 1.618.... fuck.

The nice thing about phi is that you can converge on it by dividing Fibonacci numbers. I can't remember what algorithm converges on pi, though.

Pi/4 = 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + ...

It's the arctan(-1) Taylor series.

[deleted]

We are never ever ever converging towards a rational number.

I knew you weren't rational when you walked iiiinnnn

Of course!

If you estimate it with the first 100 summands it gives you 3.13159. Definitely easier to remember the digits you need than to estimate it with that series.

You can actually take any two numbers and get phi.

In Python:

from random import randint
a, b  = randint(1,9999), randint(1,9999)
for x in range(50):
    a, b = b, a+b
print(float(b) / a)

You'll get phi to good precision. If you use the Lucas numbers, same deal starting with 2,1, then you'll notice that the values between iterations is the same as the rounded value of phi to the power of that iteration.

X^2 + X - 1= 0

phi = (1 + √5) / 2

X^2 + X -1 = 0

Nah. Euler's number e.

I spent my senior year of high school trigonometry either sleeping or staring at a poster of pi, which is why I still remember 3.1415926535897932384626433

I always thought the patterns like this were interesting - 141, 535, 979, 323, 626, etc.

Looking for patterns and storing them as an image in your mind is how mentalists typically remember huge, abstract numbers. There are a lot of great techniques in this Great Courses lecture series: Secrets to a Powerful Memory.

Speaking of Pi, did you know this year March 14th will be 3/14/15, making Pi day a little bit more special.

It will only be Pi day in the USA and Belize, as they are the only countries to use that daft date format.

you're just mad because you have to wait 30 years for a pi day

Will it ever be the 31st of April XX15?

Everyone in the rational part of the world knows that pi day is 22nd of July (22/7 is a common approximation of pi).

Yeah don't be'that' guy

What about the 31st of april 2015? Oh... right.

So what are we talking here? The 3rd day of the 14th month of 2015? No, that doesn't work.

You said in 30 years, that'll be 2045. I don't think '45' appears in pi for a long while. What date will be pi day using d/m/y ? 3/1/41? That's a pretty shitty date for a pi day. Though I guess it's better than waiting for 2083-06-02, us American's only have to wait for 2031-06-28.

45 - 41 = 4

I was rounding ~~it doesn't take a genius to see that~~

Edit: I was mad

Downvotes? I was just trying to figure out when the next pi and tau days were in the two different date systems. But I guess that's down vote worthy?

2015-3-14

ISO has it too, if you ignore the YYYY part.

The ISO format goes from least to most precise (year, month, day). The commonly used format dd/mm/yy goes from most to least precise. The format used in Belize is a bit arbitrary.

The ISO format is good because you can add the time in such a way that it continues becoming more precise: yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm:ss

ISO still gets a pi when you ignore the year.

All date formats other than ISO 8601 are daft.

People always say this but it's not that weird. It's just March the 14th of 2015 as opposed to the 14th of March of 2015

Unless you're not American

More pi for us.

[deleted]

I think they typically use floor when truncating Pi.

At 9:26 and 54 seconds, that's when the party begins.

14/3/15?

It doesnt make sense

that's because you're doing it wrong

or you're doing it wrong

Which is nice....

Gunga galunga

[deleted]

hah! mine is the same! I picked it because at that many places you don't have to guess about whether its rounded or truncated :D

That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage.

I only know Pi is 3.14 because 314 is my area code.

Surely no-one needs to know pi to more than one significant figure?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDMBtQjS1bQ

I can do it as far as my calculator can here is kindve proof. 3.141592654

Many decimal places but only one decimal point.

Relevant smbc: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1777

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923

I probably have autism.

False Pi only goes to one decimal point, 3.2. So sayeth the 1897 Indiana congress

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

I can give you a 100 digit sequence of numbers from pi.

This is how I remember it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NgjkwQ-7lY

The key is to keep going until you find where it repeats...

I know the first 5 decimal digits.

3.14159

Here's my favorite song mnemonic for pi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaDm9G4Ig18

May I have a large container of coffee, cream and sugar?

3.1415926535

Can^3 I^1 have^4 a^1 small^5 container^9 of^2 coffee^6

Number of letters in each word: 3.1415926

I can recite it to 9 digits! Because that's how far a graphic calculator takes you and I've seen 3.141592654 so many times it's committed to memory.

Too bad she died in The Cube.

[deleted]

Aperture Science ?

Kazan died?

Also OTHER PEOPLE HAVE SEEN THAT MOVIE?

There's the implication in Cube Zero that Kazan is actually one of the original opperators of the cube that was basically lobotomized or something and thrown into it after he refused to comply with "orders".

It's also shown that after you exit the cube (and others have before) you're toasted by flamethrowers if you "don't believe in god" though it's also implied that no one has ever said yes so you don't know what happens if they do.

They exit through the gift shop and pick up a novelty snowcube

I remember watching that when I was about 14. It messed with my mind and I loved it. Haven't seen the others tho. Worth it?

2 was a fun movie to watch but the end sucks and zero uh... Just kinda weird

It's like they were trying to mnight shamalamadingdong you around every corner

[deleted]

Is it common? I have never seen anyone talk about it

This room is.... Green

I don't like this room. Let's go back to the.... blue room.

As...tro...nomical....

Best funny comment!

In my grade 12 biology class in summer school, I was talking to this random girl about movies and I mentioned how The Cube was one of my favorite weird movies. And she felt the same way. To this day she is the only other person I have met that has seen The Cube.

for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation

Today it's as simple as:

$ python
Python 2.7.8 (v2.7.8:ee879c0ffa11, Jun 29 2014, 21:07:35) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016 129132845564805780158806771 ** (1.0/23.0)
546372890.9999996

You coud have at least rounded the result to the nearest integer.

But, it makes a nice example of how floating point accuracy sometimes just isn't enough.

Even much much smaller numbers will exhibit rounding errors.

It's decimal though. I find it stupid that we expect binary representations to yield perfect results in decimal.

I don't think it's stupid at all to expect this, especially as a beginner. I think it's far more confusing that your computer doesn't do perfect math when most people would expect it too.

No, you're right. Stupid was the wrong word. Ignorant is probably more fitting, but a general ignorance expected of those who haven't studied any computer engineering.

My favorite is asking someone to mentally calculate the result of 0.1 + 0.2 if done in javascript

With that type system? "0.10.2" probably.

Why guess?

javascript:alert(0.1+0.2);

Copy and paste to location bar.

Or, you know : 

>>> 546372891**23
916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771L

You don't need anything else to confirm her awnser, And as a bonus that's all integer calculation so no floating point accuracy shenanigans.

Thank you for pointing this out! You're the first person in this thread (I could find) who noticed that you can "check" a 23rd root by multiplying it 23 times. It makes the claim that they needed to write a "special program" to do check it seem a little dubious....

Well it was 1977.

In 1977 they had already calculated Pi to around 2 million digits. A 201 digit number was trivial even back then.

Sure. You still needed custom software for all of that. Today you can get 2 million digits of pi from python with mpmath.

I just find the phrasing to be an exaggeration of how difficult this was. Calling this a "large calculation" needing a "special program" is a little silly even by 1977 standards.

So basically your only objection is to the word "special" right?

They did need to write a program in order to check her answer, they couldn't have just written "print pow(546372891, 23)".

I doubt any programmer at the time would describe this calculation as 'special' or 'large'. They were using C back then.

It certainly would have been called large because you could not have easily stored the result (it's much larger than a 32 bit int, if they even had those in 1977) so yes, it requires a "special program" to calculate this, and it's a bit of a pain to calculate it.

It takes more than just a simple for loop with a multiplication in it, since you have to actually devise a way to store your result without using just a single primitive data type.

They were using C back then.

In reply to your edit, C does not do this calculation natively. You have to create a special program (in C) to retrieve this large result.

If you asked university/college students that have learned some C to calculate this, I bet most could not give you a solution within a few hours.

And that's kinda sad. Well, I have to fess up. In early college I didn't know C well enough to write it in C. But I knew other languages. In a couple hours I probably could have had it done in assembly for every platform I knew assembly for back then (Z80, x86, and three others). Interestingly enough, the calculation can be done with just 256 bytes of RAM - whether you raise it to the power, or take an n-th root.

They still knew how exponents work

god damn no one reads the linked page on this sub for christ sake

They wrote a program especially to solve this. All programs could be argued to be special or specialized ;)

Well, it might be more simple the exponentiation way, but still, in any situation where I could write a program to solve 546372891^23 and avoid calculating manually, I would write a program to do it.

Yes, THIS^ and THIS^^. Came wandering down-thread searching to see if anyone had noted this.

It's not dubious. In 1977 the general purpose computers didn't normally come with arbitrary precision math libraries attached.

You're the first person in this thread (I could find) who made it completely obvious that you didn't actually click through to the link. It makes the claim that you should be commenting a little dubious...

Or

Surd[916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771, 23]

in Mathematica 9+

I love python

Hold on. Do this in python:

  • a= 1 / [8721 * sqrt(3) - 10681 * sqrt(2)]
  • b= [8721 * sqrt(3) + 10681 * sqrt(2)]

Is a = b? Why not?

"Simple". Your result is incorrect.

It's off by 0.0000004. That's close enough to confirm her answer.

[deleted]

Boring floating-point imprecision issue. Deal with it.

[removed]

Python, on the whole, is far simpler than excel. Just doesn't have the gui to do everything for you.

[deleted]

Well yes, they serve different purposes. But I can say that an ordinary toaster is simpler than an ordinary television, despite the disparate uses. What I'm saying is that python is simpler under the hood, but excel tends to be easier to use, especially for newcomers.

Yep, I don't normally have Excel open so starting the Python shell is much, much faster for me.

Nice copy and paste to seem smart.

I don't understand. Were you expecting me to manually type out the output from the shell?

[deleted]

Interesting! True?

This is my TIL for the day. I had no idea!

This does not compute!

Rrrrr... ERROR!

... computer used to refer to humans, really? I've never heard of that before nor could I find a source on that, care to expand? Even by the 19th century it was apparently used to refer to a calculating machine (albeit mechanical).

Well the definition you gave notes its original meaning was "one who computes." Wiktionary gives the definition "A person employed to perform computations; one who computes," quoting books from 1927 and 2003. Several of the dictionaries cited at dictionary.com give similar definitions, as does my copy of The New Oxford American Dictionary (as a "special usage" term).

So what you're saying is that the first calculators were SomethingPink

Regarding the fact that they had to build a computer to confirm her calculations: She was asked to do this in 1977...

That made me skeptical of the title, but it makes sense for the time period. A lot of computers back then had custom libraries for math more complex than basic arithmetic on 8-bit (often less!) numbers. A lot of those libraries had terrible bugs, too.

Today, we'd download a BigNum library that probably only has a few niche bugs, and then generalize Newton's Method to handle n-roots.

Yeah, today every single computer in this thread can do this easily. Even the phones I'd bet.

My roommate got a smartphone yesterday. Nothing special, but it easily outperforms his wife's laptop of five years.

This should be higher up. The title is very misleading as it's stated now. Her feat is extremely impressive, but such a calculation is utterly trivial for today's computers. I just did it in Mathematica and it spit out the answer instantly.

Bethe and Feynman:

"Like an alcoholic who plants bottles within arm's reach of every chair in the house, Bethe had stored away. a device for anywhere he landed in the realm of numbers. He knew tables of logarithms and he could interpolate with unerring accuracy. Feynman's own mastery of calculating had taken a different path. He knew how to compute series and derive trigonometric functions, and how to visualize the relationships between them. He had mastered mental tricks covering the deeper landscape of algebraic analysis-differentiating and integrating equations of the kind that lurk dragonlike in the last chapters of calculus texts. He was continually put to the test. The theoretical division sometimes seemed like the information desk at a slightly exotic library."

From http://www.precisioninfo.com/index.php?doc_id=64

I really need to step up my alcoholism

Yep--this problem boils down to the ability to approximate logarithms/exponents, probably through linear interpolation of a collection of memorized values. This is plausible given that up to 100,000 digits of pi have been memorized.

Dammit reddit. SMH

Le reddit Army lulz

it's been changed back, but kudos for noticing that. there's nothing sadder of an existence than to be a militant redditor.

I may otherwise not have seen this if you hadn't linked it. In fact, almost certainly would not have done. Have an upvote for your trouble! /u/changetip

/u/bob__loblaw, Tom2Die wants to send you a Bitcoin tip for an upvote (425 bits/$0.10). Follow me to collect it.

ChangeTip info | ChangeTip video | /r/Bitcoin

I usually don't think dumb shit like that is funny, but I actually lol'd.

She also wrote a book called 'Homosexuality in India' after she found out that her husband was gay. She called for homosexuality to be legalized in India.

[deleted]

This is only because of the long history of transgenders in India. They're recognized as a subclass of people needing welfare as stated by the Indian Supreme Court...hardly noteworthy.

Yes, they are recognized as a third gender, and yes they get different rights because of this, however as stated here it's basically to classify them as a minority.

Finally let's not forget that this judgment came shortly after any acts of homosexuality or homosexual sex were criminalized in the country, so the third gender thing hardly appeases the situation.

Finally let's not forget that this judgment came shortly after any acts of homosexuality or homosexual sex were criminalized in the country, so the third gender thing hardly appeases the situation.

you are wrong Supreme court said it can't change that Victorian law only parliament can change it

homosexuality or homosexual sex were criminalized in the country

I am pretty sure that the Indian govt after independence has not criminalized homosexuality we are just following British law who actually passed that law in British India. Sadly decriminalizing its not a high priority

Really? Sindhis all have transgenders come to weddings, births, deaths, etc to bless those involved. I'm not fully sure why. But my cousins that live in India absolutely do respect trannys. Just not the homeless ones that harass everyone in Mumbai.

Recognizing Trans ppl as 3rd gender completely defeats the point for a Trans person wanting to be a opposite gender.

It's not about trans people. It's about third-gender people, a millennia-old concept in much of South Asia. While they are like trans women in that they're born male and present as female, they're much more likely to identify as somewhere between the two genders, rather than as purely female.

This phenomenon is also found in native cultures of the Americas.

There is no Third gender. All a trans person wants is to live like the opposite gender. They want to be recognized as that gender. Not labelled as third gender and treated like a 3rd class citizen.

You're missing the point. This isn't about transgender individuals. The third gender is a construct that appears in many cultures around the world. These people identify as neither male nor female, and often held prized special roles within their societies. It is a well-documented phenomenon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender

I am an Indian. Atleast in india, the trans people are not third gender. They dont fall in between man and women. They clearly want to live in the opposite gender they were born into. Labelling them as third gender is nothing worth the praise. They are not granted the rights they ask for.

Then you are talking about transgender people, not third gendered people. transgender != third gender. You are thinking in the gender binary, as in there are only males or females. In much the same way as sexuality, this is a poor construct for how things actually are in the world.

Regarding sexuality: there are gay people and there are straight people. But then there are also bisexuals and people on every single point along the spectrum between gay and straight. There are people that aren't even on the spectrum.

It's the exact same with gender. You can be male or female. You can also be transgender, meaning you identify with the gender opposite of your physical sex. You can also be anywhere in between male and female, or completely off the spectrum.

The "third gender" is a construct that many societies (especially non-Western societies) use to describe people that do not fit into the neat little boxes of "male" and "female". They are not transgender, they do not use the gender binary that many people use as a default.

I think the confusion here is that, from what I've read, some hijras identify as third-gender, but others do identify as female, more akin to what we'd call a transgender woman in the West. So the legal recognition of third-gender status is a victory for those who identify as such, but not for those who wish to actually be recognized as women.

You are correct. Transgender! =third gender. But India does not have a third gender problem. There are so many MTF trasgender out in public who are treated as third class citizens. They may not look feminine, but all they want is to live as a female. Giving them a thrid gender status is not they really want.

Some people count any recognition of anything other than two genders exactly mapping to two biological sexes as a victory because they think it opens the door to other stuff being recognized later.

Others use it as ammunition to support claims that the concept of two genders exactly mapping to two biological sexes was invented by old European white men and forced on the rest of the world via colonialism in the first place.

[deleted]

Well there are various cultures with concepts of third or fourth (or even higher-numbered) genders, but in South Asian cultures it generally refers to people who are born male, present themselves as female, and identify as somewhere in between.

Here's the Wikipedia article on the concept as a whole: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender

And here's the one on it as specifically applies in South Asia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)

[deleted]

Basically, gender is how we define male-ness and female-ness in a social/cultural context.

In some cultures, that's a division made on a binary level. For the most part, Western culture is like this. (I.e., even transgender people generally prefer to conform to the gender binary, rather than simply being somewhere "in between."

And in other cultures, it's a division made with some room in the middle. So a third gender is a category of people who fit the definitions for neither males nor females in a social context. And a fourth gender is one that fits those for neither neither males, females, nor third-genders. And so on and so forth.

Wikipedia gives the example of some indigenous American cultures where the four genders are masculine men, feminine women, feminine men, and masculine women.

I am like the exact opposite of her

You give answers, and people have to make questions for it?

No I will take 50 seconds to figure out 4x16 for example

so you can multiply a number x 23 times to get a 201 digit number in your head in 1/50th of a second? Wow..

Well the 201st root of a 23 digit number is quite a bit easier.

You hate homosexuals?

I can lick my nose

I can lick my elbow.

Give this guy some award.

I can't even do that.

Very few people can

Indian mental calculator

Indian mentat

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

[deleted]

LOL You should read the book, dude. Much better than the movie. Cheers.

Well the movie was horrible...

I loved the books, so the movie was a huge disappointment. The TV version was great either, but I enjoyed it more.

I've watched the movie again, knowing that it was terrible and nothing like the book and I could kinda enjoy how insane it is

Also, being really gay and homophobic at the same time is no small achievement.

I forgot my mantra.

Hey, I just started reading this book this morning. What are the odds I find a reference on the same day?

I've actually met her in person way back, when I was 11-12 probably. My parents and I went to a place for lunch in Bangalore and we found out that she was living in the hotel there. My dad optimistically requested the reception to ask if we can meet her. 10 minutes later, we were in her hotel room drinking orange juice and talking to this great person :).

Looking back, I can't believe that I got the opportunity to meet her.

In my physics class during school, one of my friends forgot to bring a book of logarithm tables (Clark's tables) that we used to solve problems (as calculators weren't allowed). Seeing that he was attempting to solve relatively complex problems involving a lot of math without the log tables, our professor asked him "You think you are Shakuntala Devi"?

This lady was a legend!

"Mathematicians hate her!"

Had an advanced math class when I was in middle school, and in said class, there was an autistic kid named Justin. He was pretty obviously autistic, but was actually a really cool kid. He wad in the class mainly due to the fact that he was faster than any calculator we could use anyways. Everyone thought that he just studied a lot,but I remember one day we were waiting to get let out from class when someone asked Justin what 69x69 was,kinda as a joke. Immediately, he answered 4,761. We checked the math and we're pretty impressed. over the next 15 mins, we learned just how UNGODLY GOOD Justin was at math. We were asking square roots of decimal numbers, ridiculous questions such as 6.396 cubed, and he would fire answers out like it was nothing. It absolutely blew our minds, especially being the 12/13 year Olds we were that he could do more than times tables above 12, let alone to the EXACT decimal place. Saw him a few years later, he got jacked and went to state for wrestling before he got kicked out for being pressured by a coach to use steroids :(

13 years old? Yeah, you would ask what 69x69 is heh

WASN'T ME OKAY.

I was too socially awkward to know what 69 was back then.

I have left reddit for Voat due to years of admin mismanagement and preferential treatment for certain subreddits and users holding certain political and ideological views.

The situation has gotten especially worse since the appointment of Ellen Pao as CEO, culminating in the seemingly unjustified firings of several valuable employees and bans on hundreds of vibrant communities on completely trumped-up charges.

The resignation of Ellen Pao and the appointment of Steve Huffman as CEO, despite initial hopes, has continued the same trend.

As an act of protest, I have chosen to redact all the comments I've ever made on reddit, overwriting them with this message.

If you would like to do the same, install TamperMonkey for Chrome, GreaseMonkey for Firefox, NinjaKit for Safari, Violent Monkey for Opera, or AdGuard for Internet Explorer (in Advanced Mode), then add this GreaseMonkey script.

Finally, click on your username at the top right corner of reddit, click on comments, and click on the new OVERWRITE button at the top of the page. You may need to scroll down to multiple comment pages if you have commented a lot.

After doing all of the above, you are welcome to join me on Voat!

I WAS 13

shun the nonbeliever!

Not-very-relevant-story time. She used to live in Bangalore. One of my relatives, lets call her Preety, went to visit her just a few months before her death. Apparently Shakuntala Devi used to read horoscopes for money, and gave Preety a (very wrong) reading that she would be married to and settled abroad by the end of the year.

Kinda sad that someone with such an awesome ability ended up having to charge people for dubious readings. Or it might just be a reflection on us Indians' propensity to believe in dubious stuff.

Let's train her to mine Bitcoin. We'll be rich! We can live in Reddit Gold houses and party with the meme stars.

She passed away in 2013.

lol ponzi schemes.

lol ponzi schemes.

Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for hich a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation

So, they chose a 9 figures number with all the digits scrambled:

123 456 789

546 372 891

Yer a Mentat, Devi.

In 1977, she wrote The World of Homosexuals, the first study of homosexuality in India. In the documentary For Straights Only, she says that her interest in the topic came out of her marriage to a homosexual man and subsequent desire to look at homosexuality more closely to understand it.

The book, considered "pioneering", features interviews with two young Indian homosexual men, a male couple in Canada seeking legal marriage, a temple priest who explains his views on homosexuality, and a review of the existing literature on homosexuality. It ends with a call for decriminalising homosexuality, and "full and complete acceptance—not tolerance and not sympathy". The book, however, went mostly unnoticed at the time.

She was really ahead of her time.

Bene Gesserit witch!

Her name is an anagram for A Leviathan Dusk. She's clearly not human.

and apparently wrote some pretty groundbreaking work on accepting homosexuality... damn this lady's a badass

But can she see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

Other names: "Human computer"

Maybe she can explain the "Making 10's" thing to us.

I mean where else besides reddit would I find a bunch of basement dwelling neckbeards trying to downplay her accomplishments by saying how easy the problem actually is. GOTTA LOVE REDDIT

Well, it's either that or she's a time-travelling supercomputer.

TIL Shakuntala devi's husband was gay!

That woman is a goddamned legend here in India. I had so many of her puzzle books as a kid, brings back fond memories.

R.I.P this true legend

I find it interesting that she also wrote a book on decriminalizating & accepting homosexuality in India in 1977.

Just to think last night I confidently told my gf that 9+14 is 26.

A computer never would have gotten that answer! ... just sayin..

All humans are equal, some humans are more equal then others.

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

I remember hearing a story of her on her deathbed, during of the last conversations she had, she asked her friend what the numbers on the cab they took to see her were. He regretfully said them aloud, thinking there was nothing significant about them. Then he just smiled and came up with some awesome way of explaining why the numbers were beautiful.

I really wish I could remember them, it was on NPR about a year ago.

It says Dickbutt now in her photo

I like how in the thumbnail she's just like, "Bitch you ain't got shit on me."

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Mentat!

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

my uncle who lives next door was her lawyer and she used to visit him quite often specially during her last few years and she has visited our home more than once. we used to ask her to solve math problems just to see if she was right :-)

lucky guess

Nine Hundred Sixteen Quinsexagintillion Seven Hundred Forty-Eight Quattuorsexagintillion Six Hundred Seventy-Six Tresexagintillion Nine Hundred Twenty Duosexagintillion Thirty-Nine Unsexagintillion One Hundred Fifty-Eight Sexagintillion Ninety-Eight Novemquinquagintillion Six Hundred Sixty Octoquinquagintillion Nine Hundred Twenty-Seven Septenquinquagintillion Five Hundred Eighty-Five Sexquinquagintillion Three Hundred Eighty Quinquinquagintillion One Hundred Sixty-Two Quattuorquinquagintillion Four Hundred Eighty-Three Trequinquagintillion One Hundred Six Duoquinquagintillion Six Hundred Eighty Unquinquagintillion One Hundred Forty-Four Quinquagintillion Three Hundred Eight Novemquadragintillion Six Hundred Twenty-Two Octoquadragintillion Four Hundred Seven Septenquadragintillion One Hundred Twenty-Six Sexquadragintillion Five Hundred Sixteen Quinquaquadragintillion Four Hundred Twenty-Seven Quattuorquadragintillion Nine Hundred Thirty-Four Trequadragintillion Six Hundred Fifty-Seven Duoquadragintillion Forty Unquadragintillion Eight Hundred Sixty-Seven Quadragintillion Ninety-Six Novemtrigintillion Five Hundred Ninety-Three Octotrigintillion Two Hundred Seventy-Nine Septentrigintillion Two Hundred Five Sextrigintillion Seven Hundred Sixty-SevenQuintrigintillion Four Hundred Eighty Quattuortrigintillion Eight Hundred Six Tretrigintillion Seven Hundred Ninety Duotrigintillion Twenty-Two Untrigintillion Seven Hundred Eighty-Three Trigintillion Sixteen Novemvigintillion Three Hundred Fifty-Four Octovigintillion Nine Hundred Twenty-Four Septenvigintillion Eight Hundred Fifty-Two Sexvigintillion Three Hundred Eighty Quinvigintillion Three Hundred Thirty-Five Quattuorvigintillion Seven Hundred Forty-Five Trevigintillion Three Hundred Sixteen Duovigintillion Nine Hundred Thirty-Five Unvigintillion One Hundred Eleven Vigintillion Nine Hundred Three Novemdecillion Five Hundred Ninety-Six Octodecillion Five Hundred Seventy-Seven Septendecillion Five Hundred Forty-Seven Sexdecillion Three Hundred Forty Quindecillion Seventy-Five Quattuordecillion Six Hundred Eighty-One Tredecillion Six Hundred Eighty-Eight Duodecillion Three Hundred Five Undecillion Six Hundred Twenty Decillion Eight Hundred Twenty-One Nonillion Sixteen Octillion One Hundred Twenty-Nine Septillion One Hundred Thirty-Two Sextillion Eight Hundred Forty-Five Quintillion Five Hundred Sixty-Four Quadrillion Eight Hundred Five Trillion Seven Hundred Eighty Billion One Hudred Fifty-Eight Million Eight Hundred Six Thousand Seven Hundred Seventy-One

While her achievement seems superhuman, she has actually mastered a method of calculation which is thousands of years old called Vedic Math, which comes from the Upanishads. It is a method of organizing numbers in your mind and doing complex calculations which would otherwise be impossible. The reason she was able to calculate such a complex number is that she was able to split the problem into dozens or even hundreds of separate smaller simpler problems. An amazing skill.

Here is a small example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRAORiHhcyU

Didn't modern numerals come from India? But we just call them "Arabic" because Europeans got them through contact with the Arabs?

This is correct

Yes. Arabs brought back the modern numerical system (digits 0 to 9) to Europeans from India. However, Europeans had various systems before this time based on the "dozen" by counting the folds in your fingers using your thumb and then tallying number of dozens on the left hand. There are 12 folds, 3 in each of your 4 fingers. Your thumb is used as a placeholder. This is also where we get the Roman numerals by which hand symbols could be used to indicate numbers. This was useful in loud crowded markets where merchants would signal each other as to how much a quantity of merchandise would be.

For example; You can easily make and L shape with your fingers to make 50. That is why L is 50. V is 5, using the V for victory symbol. C is 100, cupping your hand. Etc.

This is also why we have 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute. 60 minutes is five 12 minute periods counted out using five 12 second periods. 1 minute is a first minute division of 1 hour. 1 second is the second minute division of an hour. (1/60 is a minute division. This is why minute also means really small)

The 360 degrees in a circle are also attributed to this and the 360 days of the year measured for winter equinox to winter equinox (with 5 "holy" days).

Huh. I figured 365 from astrophysics.

Well, in ancient Roman calendars, before the Julian Calendar (Referring to Julius Caesar who approved it as the calendar of the Roman Empire), pagan calendars had 360 days with 2 or 3 days at the Summer Solstice and then at the Winter Solstice when the sun appeared to rise in the same place each day on the horizon for 2 or 3 days before moving north again. On the third or fourth day the sun rises noticeably further north on the horizon. This accounts for the "extra" days. They of course were not aware of why this occurred.

Yeah, Vedic maths doesn't come from the Vedas, specially the Upanishads, which are strictly for brahman-vidya. They are simple calculation tricks which are fraudulently said to be from the Vedas.

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, there is a anuvaka (section), that extols the "Beatific Calculus"

http://www.hindupedia.com/en/Mathematics_of_the_Vedas

The problem with the Vedas is that they mention these math techniques in passing when talking about something totally different like philosophy or Nirvana or happiness or some other item. They aren't like western textbooks which extol one subject. This makes math from the Vedas disjointed, difficult to bring together and so is confusing.

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, there is a anuvaka (section), that extols the "Beatific Calculus"

You mean it talks about multiplication which isn't calculus.

The problem with the Vedas is that they mention these math techniques in passing

No they don't. It has always been accepted that any text must have a clearly defined purpose, which is accepted by all the classical commentators, none of whom have talked of maths in the Vedas. If it was meant as maths, then they would have mentioned it.

The Vedas certainly don't mention what is knows today as Vedic mathematics, which you alluded to and now refuse to talk about, which are shortcut techniques for calculations.

So what you are saying is that Hinduism has made absolutely no impact on mathematics whatsoever. Just because they don't have books which specifically talk only about math doesn't mean the maths which are mentioned in the Vedas are invalid. "Vedic Mathematics" is a book which just brings together all the techniques and short cuts which are in the Vedas. This isn't a fraud or conspiracy. The author isn't trying to make Hinduism appear as something it isn't. These techniques existed in India for thousands of years. They were written down in the Vedas. The author brought them together and wrote a book. It's that simple.

The Vedas certainly don't mention what is knows today as Vedic mathematics, which you alluded to and now refuse to talk about, which are shortcut techniques for calculations.

What are you talking about? That is the entire topic of our conversation. Of course I am talking directly about that. The cross multiplying "Beautiful Calculus" which I refer to in the my previous comment which I linked to, is specifically the technique used to multiply and so calculate the answer. My kids use it. It's not modern Calculus as we use the word. It is used as a technique to help calculate (multiple) large numbers.

So what you are saying is that Hinduism has made absolutely no impact on mathematics whatsoever.

No, I am saying that Hindus have made impacts on mathematics, and we have separate texts dealing with mathematics from ancient times, so we don't need to go look to the Vedas for every damn thing.

Vedic Mathematics" is a book which just brings together all the techniques and short cuts which are in the Vedas.

No, because you haven't shown they are anywhere in the Vedas in the first place.

"Vedic Maths" was mostly transmitted orally. I don't think there is any authoritative Vedic Maths book from ancient times.

This is also why a lot of these techniques are either lost, overhyped or just wrong.

This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.

^If ^you ^follow ^any ^of ^the ^above ^links, ^respect ^the ^rules ^of ^reddit ^and ^don't ^vote ^or ^comment. ^Questions? ^Abuse? ^Message ^me ^here.

She was uneducated and started performing between 3-6 years old. I'm not sure what orifice you pulled this out of.

her mind organizes things in such a way that resembles vedic math. She most definitely refined her skills over years of practice, but she is also somewhat of a savant

I'd probably agree with you there there is some physiological component to her abilities.

If this was all skill, someone would have had to teach her all of this.

If she just figured it all out on her own, see #1.

why only "somewhat of a savant"?

You do know how incomprehensible 201 digits is?

She has a neurological disorder? Cant be a savant without a neurological disorder.

He/she is just saying that it is know to an extent how she performs these calculations. I don't think it was meant to take anything away from her though.

She was uneducated at 3 years old. Thank Sherlock.

And already doing the tricks. You are welcome, Watson.

source?

The link? Feel free to read 'early life', the fact she was touring at 6, and explain where her education comes into play? Jesus Christ...here:

Her father left the circus and took her on road shows that displayed her ability at calculation.[2] She did this without any formal education.

Where are the 23rd roots at age 3?

No, your turn. I provided a citation. Now you provide one that she studied that type of math at any point in her life.

ur the one saying she was doing 23rd roots at age 3.

No, my claim was that she was able to do advanced math without having studied some vedric method. You are moving the goalposts because you look like an idiot for commenting without reading the link.

started performing between 3-6 years old.

read it and weep. u made the claim not me.

I cited that claim. You are just drooling at this point. You are taking a totally different discussion about her accomplishments later, which you still haven't cited as resulting from vedric math, and saying that I claimed she did those when she was 3-6. Stupid stupid stupid. Have a good day.

the claim said "performing", which could have referred to 2+2=4.

Probably an Indian Redditor pushing his religious agenda (Vedic math is amazing omg, etc).

I just read about it and I don't see how it has any kind of special relevance.

My daughter was using Vedic Math at 5 years old and multiplying two 2-digit numbers together.

thank god we invented a thing that makes all this useless.

[deleted]

Yeah that happens to me a lot too.

[deleted]

hook, line and sinker. Started out in a typically pretentious redditor style but made a fun turn

Vedic math is a bunch of hacks. It won't help you get to the 23rd root

In highschool I used to race my friends on their calculators when doing homework together. I always won.

It's quite useful to be able to quickly know the answer without needing to have a calculator / be at a computer and punch everything in.

This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.

^If ^you ^follow ^any ^of ^the ^above ^links, ^respect ^the ^rules ^of ^reddit ^and ^don't ^vote ^or ^comment. ^Questions? ^Abuse? ^Message ^me ^here.

shit you're cool

Lots of math competitions don't allow calculators either. I always did comparatively better (or less worse) on the non-calc ones because I was better at mental math than my peers, even if I wasn't the best at math.

except thanks to cell phones, I now carry a calculator in my pocket everywhere I go.

Still better at math than me

i was wondering why no one was really talking about vedic math on here

The problem with Vedic math is that it is a purely mechanical skill involving tons of memorization. For example you'd memorize the rule for multiplying a 3 digit number by 7 when all the digits are odd. It doesn't lend itself well to higher level tasks like problem solving which is emphasized more today. It's not a great idea to train people to think like computers when we have actual computers that are much better at being computers.

Came here to mention Vedic Math.

Nice try sanghi

yeah it's very neat but it isn't really all that impressive. What is impressive is that guy with the super high IQ who was asked various calculations and was able to answer them because the answer simply appeared in his head in different colors and shapes.

Edit: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet

TL;DR: fedora redditer isn't all that impressed.

I just have a math degree and can see its algorithmic calculations... No fedora or neckbeard here man sorry. I guess "impressive" isnt the right word.

[deleted]

Like I said impressive wasn't the right word.

It is impressive to me. I don't understand what Tammet is doing which looks like magic. Perhaps he has a high functioning part of his brain that does calculations really effectively which is disjointed from the rest of his consciousness. That is why the answers seem to just "come to him" from nowhere as colors and shapes.

Yeah I don't really have any idea how Tammet does it. I really would like to see him apply his talent to actual mathematics.. He picked up Icelandic in a week... I'm sure he could take a crack at the millennium math questions if he mastered topology or something. Would epsilons and deltas pop into his mind like shapes and colors? Fuck that's cool.

He was outed as a fraud.

Source: Google.com

A mentat IRL.

We need to be sequencing the genomes of people like this.

As far as I remember, there is something called Vedic mathematics in Indian Literature. It just makes ridiculous calculations way too easy once you get to know the basics of it. After 10 years of Alcoholism, I don't remember any of it but the name lol

[deleted]

A third root of 8, for example, is a number that you multiply by itself 3 times to equal 8.

In this case the answer is 2. 2x2x2 = 8

In more advanced mathematics there are more numbers than are on the number line and in this "Complex Plane" there are always 3 third roots of a number.

So a 23rd root is a number that you can multiply by itself 23 times to get the original number. In the complex plane you have 23 of these.

And if you like her work but aren't really a "math person" you should check out her book on homosexuality, now that will blow your mind.

Numberwang

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Dune anybody?

Mentat Approved

It still takes me time to add up the numbers on dice

What I don't understand is why they had to confirm her answer by writing a special program etc etc. Clearly they hadn't chosen a random 201 digit number, because they chose one that had an integer 23rd root. It is natural to think that they started by choosing 546372891, calculated 546372891^23, and then asked the question. So they already knew the correct answer from the beginning. Sounds like a legend to be honest.

This is obviously how they did it. And even if they hadn't you don't need a special program to find the answer:

matts-mbp:radish matt$ python
Python 2.7.8 (v2.7.8:ee879c0ffa11, Jun 29 2014, 21:07:35) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. 
>>> x=546372891**23 
>>> len("%d"%x)
201
>>> x**(1/23.0)
546372890.9999996

That's good enough for me

Well this was 1977 so there was no Python and computers could carry much fewer bits, so they probably did need a special program. But anyway, we agree that they had to have the correct answer in the first place.

Ahh, my mistake, I didn't notice the 1977 bit. I was looking at some other comments where they were talking about this being in 2015.

So first you'd build a time machine?

So first you'd build a time machine?

So first you'd build a time machine?

And I'm over here failing my algebra class...

As a 28 year old failure at anything even remotely related to math. This is just incomprehensible.

How can a man of my age work on improving my own math skills without going back to school?

https://www.khanacademy.org/

And I'm just sitting here wishing I had more fingers to count on

Skultula Davi

Bene Gesserit?

Take a look at this TED Talk called Arthur Benjamin: A performance of "Mathemagic".

Towards the end, he explains what goes through his mind, truly fascinating.

And I'm just sitting here counting on my fingers.

Holy snap, a real mentat. She even has the juice of sapho stained lips!

The special program part is kinda deceiving, almost every program was a "special program" written to only do x. Computers weren't as multipurpose as we imagine.

How did they know the answer would be an integer?

Exactly what I was wondering

Generate integer, take it to the 23rd power, offer result as challenge.

But they needed a special program to check her.

Or they just could have used a one line Lisp program to verify it.

(expt 546372891 23)

done.

AKA "special software"

Though I think there would be a bit more involved due to the size of the resulting number. Did lisp normally handle 668 bit long numbers in 1977?

Yes. I am pretty sure it did. Stores long numbers as lists of digits. Math operations were done digitwise, and obviously slower than using the processor's arithmetic unit. Hence, they really didn't need "special software", a language/platform already supported it.

To put it another way. I just executed that Lisp function on a web-based interpreter. Do you think even modern CPUs do 668 bit numbers internally?

To put it another way. I just executed that Lisp function on a web-based interpreter. Do you think even modern CPUs do 668 bit numbers internally?

No, but some modern math packages in other languages are written to be able to handle that case. Contemporary languages in 1977 usually didn't.

Yeah, it was more of a 50's thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrary-precision_arithmetic

Lisp got it in the 60's.

So whatever. Amazing how much gets "reinvented" with new trendy languages and such.

Yeah, it was more of a 50's thing.

For a few computers.

Lisp got it in the 60's.

They almost certainly weren't using it. While lisp for the univac 1100 did exist at the time, the us bureau of statistics probably wasn't using it. At a guess, it was probably some bit of code written in some univac-specific variant of fortran since that's mostly what they seemed to be using at the time.

So whatever. Amazing how much gets "reinvented" with new trendy languages and such.

I guess? I mean, this is not something that's ever really disappeared.

This is pointless. The concepts and software were available in the 50's and 60's. Lisp and other languages that had bignum built-in were completely available in the late 70's.

Bignum has been lacking in many languages since. It is quite sad so many abilities of Lisp Scheme Smalltalk etc. got totally blown off in the Java .Net C# and beyond era.

Yes, they are coming back, but everyone has been slow to remember.

My Mom tells me that she would visit her dad's Clinic back in the days and the kids around would ask her to solve all kinds of math problems. This was likely when Shakuntla Devi was in her twenties/thirties. Not sure what happened later because we would only read about her in the news occasionally. Sadly she remained an object of curiosity and nothing much else despite her progressive thoughts. She died poor.

The computer part of this story is very fishy. Surely they came up with their 201-digit number that has an integer as its 23rd root by starting with the integer and raising it to the 23rd power.

In 1977, performing operations on a 201 digit number was not trivial. Not excruciatingly hard, but not something off the shelf software at the time was written to do.

Basically it requires using a lot of smaller integers to store the number in parts in memory. This is not how most math packages handle numbers, so you need to write math packages that handle numbers that way. This is even more of a problem in 1977 because they had even more constraints regarding the size of integers and the total amount of memory available to store it and perform operations on it.

I agree, but that's not really my point. Specialized software is needed to get from the smaller number to the 201-digit number, but not to confirm that she's correctly calculated the original number, which is already known.

That would be a piss poor demonstration of the abilities of a computer, and an embarassment to the science of computer programming and the engineers involved if they had to resort to half-assing a calculation a human being can do it in her head.

Although actually, if I had to implement such a function, and it didn't need to be highly optimized, I'd perform a binary search for the solution. Given that the program in this event took about a minute to calculate the answer, this may be the algorithm used.

Still can't remember if she locked the door when leaving the house.

Freakish

[deleted]

Fucking lucky guess

Indian here, I studied in her mathematical academy when I was really small, it made use of abacus, mental powers of remembrance, and some predefined algorithms. Nowhere near the level of what she did, but it improved my skills SIGNIFICANTLY. I studied there for 3 years. There was an advanced level too dealing with algebras and stuffs, but never got the time to attend it.

Indian Here! There is an ancient indian technique called Vedic Mathematics. It is thousands of years old. It pertains to all sorts of calculations and takes time to learn and even more to have grasp upon. Shakuntala Devi was famously known as the lady with a computer as a brain. She indeed was blessed with a sharp and perhaps swift way of thinking and with absolute knowledge of Vedic Mathematics and its consistent application in throughout her life, she must have deduced an accurate way of solving complex mathematical problems like the one mentioned!

...and the computer exploded behinded her as she walked away nonchalantly without turning back to see it explode

Fucking amazing! It took me 60 seconds to just read all that numbers.

When I have trouble sleeping I do long division in my head by imagining a whiteboard with the data written on it.

This lady is a bit more impressive

The veracity of this story aside, I'd love to know more about how these geniuses do the actual mental math. Like, is it subconcious to where they no longer have the ability to explain where they number comes from? Or could they show us how they did it, step by step? Are they using a shortcut that they've figured out or are they actually mentally crunching numbers at something akin to light speed?

I'd very much like to know more about the specific mental processes they use. It's fascinating.

For more information look up autism and the phenomenon called "idiot savant"- yeah, i know the name is bad- i am just reporting it to you.

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Why would they write a program to check it? Just multiply it by itself 23 times...

at a certain place value computers start truncating values so it actually does make sense that they would have to write a program to make this calculation accurately.

Meanwhile the Wiki article starts with DickButt..

I assumed this was a bit of a clickbait article after reading the 'specialized program' part. All you really need to check it was a scientific calculator that could output 200 odd digits, or the python console. Specialized program my ass

Quick! Get her to mine bitcoin!

Thanks for posting...great story of an amazing unknown person

Ok, ok, but can she figure out the value of "X"? Assuming "X" is nice enough to hold hands with all night, but not good enough to leave your current husband for (right Carly?).... Riddle me that, reddit.

Holy crapsticks. I wonder how they managed to move to London in 1944. I realise that 1940 was worse, but they couldn't have exactly taken a "safe" passage across Europe...

she is a great person

jeez what is the average indian american (asian) iq? 145? and up

ITT: All smart people on reddit can do all math calculations she did because it is actually really easy and anyone can do that.

Google does it in .72 seconds

Accountants hate her.

Ya but can she see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?!

Took me 50 seconds to read the number.

Mentat

She's obviously a mentat.

Spice melange, not even once.

She was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit number So they asked her to figure out, in her head, what number multiplied by itself 23 times gives you: 916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771 As an experiment, start a timer and see how long it takes you to say this number aloud, let alone find the 23rd frigging root of it!! It's so incomprehensible to me that someone could process it so fast!

Just to show computer capabilities, I did the twenty third root of that number in MATLAB, one hundred times on a normal desktop, dual core at 3.16GHz. It took 13.6 milliseconds total. Meaning it took my computer 0.136 ms per calculation. So my computer is roughly 367,647 times as fast as she is.

Pretty crazy how computers have completely annihilated our computational speeds in comparison, but cant begin to touch other parts of cognition. Granted thats what they are designed to do but stil 367,000 times as fast. Thats nuts. And it wont make a mistake so long as its formatted correctly.

Yeah but we made them. They are nothing without us... At least before the accident..

Except she didn't use the same technique as your computer.

Right, but I'm sure that computer they used did something similar.

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

She's a Mentat.

I knew those red lips weren't a result of makeup.

if anyone is interested in how to do it, this is how: (going to take you way longer than 50 tho, I'm sure of it) First you start by setting your limits: 10^200 <= x^23 < 10^201 (Here the equation states the x^23 should have 201 digits in the integers realm)

which gives you: 496194761<=x<=548441657 (which is a gap of 52246896 numbers) Now that you have both limits you need to interpolate starting for the first digit. if it is a 1 then the number is most likely close to 496194761 and if it is a 9 then it is most likely close to 548441657

The number it was given to her was: 916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806

To keep it simple we can make it a linear guess and start interpolating from there. since the gap is 52246896 we should multiply it *0.916 (which is the proximity of the 201 digit number to our limit) and then sum our lower limit 496194761

this gives us around: 544052918 (which is not the answer yet, but we are close) now we check 544052918 ^ 23 is actually: 8312xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (a 201 number that starts with 8312)

then we take the average in between our number and our upper limit and we get 546247288 we check 546247288 ^23 and we get : 9119xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (a 201 number that starts with 9119)

and we are getting even closer.

now we repeat with the new average being 547344473 we check it and we get: 9549xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (a 201 number that starts with 9549)

since we shot too far now we take the previous one and average it (546247288 + 547344473)/2 and we get 546795881

we check it again and we get: 9332xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (a 201 number that starts with 9332)

since we are still shooting too far we now average with this one (546247288 + 546795881)/2 and we get 546521585

and we check again and now we are at 9225xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (a 201 number that starts with 9225)

we are awfully close by now, and the process is just to repeat this until we arrive to the solution which is: 546372891

To do that many calculations so quickly it truly amazing. It took me around 10 minutes to write all this and did the calculations with the aid of a calculator (of course there are faster ways to solve this with the aid of a computer, but I broke it down to the thought process in basic operations)

And yet, even though I make it my business to avoid mainstream pop culture, I know more about Justin Bieber than people like her. Quite sad.

She may be considered a "mental calculator" but she will never be able to turn herself upside down and spell out boobs

Her answer was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.

$ python
>>> 546372891**23
91674867692003915809866092758538016248310668014430
86224071265164279346570408670965932792057674808067
90022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547
34007568168830562082101612913284556480578015880677
1L

Of course, what the title forgot to mention was that this was 1977.

What I want to know is how they knew the number they gave her was a perfect 23rd power before writing the program. EDIT: Nobody on reddit gets sarcasm.

What I want to know is how they knew the number they gave her was a perfect 23rd power before writing the program.

They didn't say that the answer was calculated after they gave her the question.

They probably just asked some guy to formulate the question and answer they were giving her beforehand, then checked that she answered with what they knew was the right answer beforehand.

I'm guessing they actually wrote the program first.

You're finding the 23rd power of a number, she had to find the 23rd root of the 200+ digit number. Not quite that simple.

Right, but finding the 23rd power of her answer is sufficient to confirm that she was right. I was talking about the "special program", not what she did.

916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771**(1/23)

546372890.9999996

Python is fun

Can confirm, Python definitely is fun.

The answer is imprecise enough that if you raise it to the 23rd power, you see a whole bunch of zeroes on the end, i.e. you don't end up anywhere near the desired number.

Edit: oops, I rounded. Still though, double-precision floats give 15 to 17 decimal digits of precision, which is nowhere near enough.

I wonder if her answer was more precise than Python's double-precision floating-point calculation.

The answer is a whole number. 1/23 is too long of a float to get the right answer though.

Floating point errors are fun.

This made me proud for being an Indian.

Srinivasa Ramanujan, look him up and be prouder. Edit: here you go - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Really? I don't need a reason to be proud for being Indian.

Why are you proud? It has nothing to do with you. Your chance of being born in India was exactly the same as everybody else's.

do you have any friends whatsoever?

Yes plenty. But everyone of them are sensible and are not proud of anything unless they are part of it.

so that's a no

I never got patriotism, this lady's achievements have nothing to do with OP but he is still proud somehow. Guess its just wanting to belong to a group of significance.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Next you're going to tell me I didn't help my Sportsball team win that scorepoint.

no it wasn't. there are more people in India than everywhere else except china. so chances of being born an Indian is next only to being born Chinese.

What I meant to say was, he had no say in the matter where he was born. Therefore, being proud of being a citizen of a country is stupid. It had nothing to do with him. People should be proud of their achievements, no matter how small. For example, I didnt smoke today. I am proud of it since on any given day, I smoke like 8 cigarettes. But its stupid for me to say I am proud to be an Indian because Sachin scored a century or something.

[deleted]

You're committing a logical fallacy here, that comment is only relevant if you know that /u/makesyougohmmm is a proud American.

Even then, no one said its invalid to say you're "proud to be an Indian" because India itself is awesome (which is what "Im proud to be American" means) the problem was with saying "I'm proud to be Indian" because this awesome person also happens to be Indian.

I am an Indian btw. But I do not feel proud "to be an Indian" when it has nothing to do with me.

Just wish we weren't so ugly

I don't think you're ugly. At least not any more likely to be ugly than white people. shrug

You do know commenting on someone appearance is worthless if you don't know what they look like.

But you said we (Indians). I meant you (Indians). Unless you and /u/WeLoveGautamGulati are actually ugly friends, then you have a point.

this made me prod to be human

Oi...nice username

Identification with collective groups is a bad thing

India are doing better and better eerry day.

YEAH! I totally agree with you.

She's Indian. Does this surprise anyone?

She obviously figured out how to use 100% of her brain.

she is so intelligient i respect her

I'm seeing a lot of misconceptions about intelligence in this thread.

1) We don't know for sure that she is a savant. The term "savant" typically denotes someone who has a high degree of talent in one specific area, with lower areas of aptitude in others. Although many Mental Calculators are savants, plenty of them are not savants and have average or above average intelligence.

2) We really can't know for certain if she's necessarily smarter than "insert genius/scientist/mathematician here" . Intelligence is multifaceted and the so-called "IQs" of prodigies vary widely. As Scott Barry Kaufman noted, Some prodigies have overall high global intelligence, while some of them have rather average cognitive skills. Some of them have such varied levels of skills that their IQ are somewhat misleading.

3) The concept of intelligence itself is still not completely understood. What separates high intellect from high creativity? How is it possible for some "geniuses", that is, people who function on a high academic and intellectual level, to score below the higher thresholds (as was supposedly the case with Richard Feynman) ? How is it possible for the reverse to happen?

EDIT

Ive always been interested in how mental computation works. Doing math in our heads is really crazy. For me, I know I visualize the actual numbers and operators involved but I know other people just think about it and it happens. Im a visual and spatial person so to me that seems like the only way to do mental math. As a result, im not terribly good at it. I tend to make sign errors and simple mistakes.

Came to the comments expecting Redditors trying to boast their intelligence. Confirmed.

Edit: Source Comment Section

I believe she was also a strong proponent for 'Vedic Mathematics'. Do we know if she used Vedic Mathematics for solving this?

I am late to this thread but I have real insight, so I will try to explain.

While what she did is quite marvelous but let me tell my story. She did this in 1973. My dad introduced me to somebody who could do it faster than her. I asked him to teach me. He did. I started practicing. This is year 1993.

I became quite efficient at this calculation. Then I saw a news that Guinness book has accepted new record at 10 seconds. A few months later it became 7 seconds. Then 5 seconds. Eventually the record was dropped.

So as you can see, since many people can do it in a few seconds now, it isn't impossible. But she was first who thought of it and did it.

As for telling day of week of any date, this is also quite simple. The calendar repeats every 28 years. So as long as you remember a few key numbers, you can quickly calculate the "offset" and then tell what day of the week person is born.

I can answer questions to explain this more if someone wishes.

What's the method behind finding the root?

It was a complete set-up. She'd been told beforehand that it'd be a 20-something root problem of a 200+ digit number. SO easy after THAT clue!

(kidding - what an incredible mind! ;-)

Well, maybe there's only two integers such as n^23 is 200-digits long, so it may be an important clue.

Wikipedia cites the answer she gave, it was nine digits long.

Actually, if you think about it, assuming whole numbers, every integer large enough to have a 20th power solution of over 200 digits would fit this clue. She'd have a lowest possible figure, and then all numbers above that. ;-)

this proves our brains were and can be used for more than just texting and watching meaningless ads and shows all day. But too bad we are sucked into this black hole of meaningless content. all we want is more of the same BS. People will watch pirates of the Caribbean part 12 when jack sparrow is abducted by batman's cat... we are a bored people. If we knew the potential of our minds, we wouldn't ever get bored. We can think and comprehend like nothing we know of, yet billions of us go to waste on mundane tasks, like updating this status and scrolling day and night on intagram. Anyways, I'm glad there are certain GEMS like this woman who can show mankind we aren't as dumb as we look. Even though sometimes I think we are.... RANT over

ITT: verysmart reddit STEMlords explaining how this isn't actually anything to be proud of, and with a simple algorithm learned from a youtube video, they were giving the twenty FOURTH root of 202 digit numbers before they could even grow hair on their necks.

[deleted]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/world/asia/shakuntala-devi-human-computer-dies-in-india-at-83.html

Google did a doodle when she died, the story published in numerous tabloids, shes a Guinness World recorder holder.

People are so quick to accept information told to them like this because they're too lazy to take the time to look it up, myself included (I wasn't even going to bother to follow the link, just check the comments). So thanks for doing that.

The astounding feat, when coupled with its source, definitely appears suspect.

Her real name is P and has an evil twin sister named NP.

One day, one of them will kill the other and the world will change forever.

She's dead you sick fuck

Ah. The tale of the PNP transisters?

P vs NP is a problem which refers to the length of time it takes computers to solve increasingly complex problems, to the point of not being able to.

First Mentat

meanwhile I struggle with the simplest of the equations...50 seconds!? this lady was incredible

Pfft, I can do that too

This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.

^If ^you ^follow ^any ^of ^the ^above ^links, ^respect ^the ^rules ^of ^reddit ^and ^don't ^vote ^or ^comment. ^Questions? ^Abuse? ^Message ^me ^here.

Math Genius Mind Blowing: http://youtu.be/nLnNuz7YQL0

<3

this woman could see the matrix

Pfft, lucky guess

Just like Fermet's solution died with him!

Is it possible that she was mildly autistic or something and not diagnosed?

Learned about her from the google doodle. What an amazing human being !

Reading about amazing people like this makes me feel inadequate and stupid. 😔

What's with mentats and those eyebrows?

It is by will and will alone, she put her mind in motion.

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

how long the calculator took would be beneficial

Milliseconds

And then she wrote a book about Homosexuality. Checks out.

Some people knit...

I used to enjoy memorizing movie running times. But I stopped when I realized the number on the box was sometimes incorrect. Like, what's the point of remembering something that might be inaccurate?

Devi is short for developer.

Good guess.

/r/shedidthemath

Good guess.

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho, that thoughts acquire speed, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

I see her as being a super villains right hand man. Woman?

The power of the human brain!!! We are not obsolete in the face of technology! There is hope!!!

My computer answered the question instantly. She took 50 seconds.

They had to write a special program just to take a her answer to the 23rd power and compare that to the original number??

I remember as a kid attending an exhibition where she was the main guest. She would come out on stage and ask random people in the audience to just start saying 6 digit numbers and she would multiply them instantly. She did many tours of these kind of shows.

Didn't she have some mild form of autism? Damn I do remember reading about this years ago.

She's a robot. Nothing else can explain this.

Dude, math is so much infinitely cooler than I thought as a kid. Like, stuff like this is so insanely cool to me

Aliens

i want to know what her dreams are like.

Clearly an alien who's inspecting how we calculate things.

The human mind has no limits

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Anyway you put it, thats just fucking awesome.

I'm not sure I could even do it correctly with a calculator. It's hard enough getting my fingers to type in the right numbers for little things properly, such as entering my bill and figuring out the tip when I go out to eat. I would certainly fuck up a 201 digit number..

psshhh, i can barely remember PEMDAS

So... Rain woman?

/r/theydidthemonstermath has nothing compared to this

Once again humans triumph over machine! Thank you Asia!

This was 40 years ago...

My laptop can solve the problem instantly.

Hey /u/agoel007,

This is now the top post on reddit. It will be recorded at /r/topofreddit with all the other top posts.

Unbelievable Results.

Tree fiddy

A special fedora I guess now

To be fair, it was 1977.

Indians are really good at maths and science things..

"For which a special fedora had to be worn to perform such a large calculation"

Who did this?

Refreshed page and it's already been changed back, luckily took a screeny.

God damnit reddit!! Who edited the page to include a fedora in the quote???

I just punched this into my calculator and it gave me an error. :|

M'lady

"Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special fedora had to be worn to perform such a large calculation."

Bahaha, a strong proud independent redditor edited wikipedia.

In 2015, at /r/atheism, she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit Mountain Dew promotional code; she answered in 50 seconds.[1][4] Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special fedora had to be worn to perform such a large calculation.

I saw that challenge and I blacked out.

http://imgur.com/UPe6IyF

special fedora

Is the wikipeidia article wrong? it says in 2015 she did this amazing calculation, but it also says she died in 2013... am I misreading something?

In 2015, at /r/atheism, she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit Mountain Dew promotional code; she answered in 50 seconds.[1][4] Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special fedora had to be worn to perform such a large calculation.

ಠ_ಠ

"For which a special fedora had to be worn to perform such a large calculation."

Someone already updated the Wikipedia page on Reddit's behalf.

In April 2013, Devi was admitted to a hospital in Bengaluru with respiratory problems.[1] Over the following two weeks she suffered from complications of the heart and kidneys.[1][2] She died in the hospital on 21 April 2013.[1][2] She was 83 years old.[2][3] She is survived by her daughter, Anupama Banerji.[3][8]

Died 21 April 2013 (aged 83)

wat?

Imagine though, if she was just really lucky and guessed.

Alien life. Simple

But does she know 9 + 10 ?

Yeah, but could she do it on a wet night in Stoke?

Reddit waz here: http://i.imgur.com/TLu4oqP.png

It's also crazy they had to write a special program just to calculate that back then, and yet I just did it on my phone's basic calculator app in a split second.

The fact i think is the most amazing is that they had to write a new program and probably had a hard time making it work and maybe even took hours to calculate it when the program was done. Now i just put it into a random crappy math program and i'll get the answer in a fraction of a second.

Mentat Shakuntala Devi, Message for Mentat Shakuntala Devi, Reddit is impatient for the 23rd root of 916748676920039158098660927585380162483106680144308622407126516427934657040867096593279205767480806790022783016354924852380335745316935111903596577547340075681688305620821016129132845564805780158806771

It feels like figuring this out is the key to everything about the brain...

It makes no sense at all. It's beyond all of our technology. Literally, our best computers are made to look like nothing in comparison.

Really puts all of our technology in perspective, hah.

My mother also saw her when she was young. She would do visits through schools and do presentations on how amazing she is at maths!

"Did you remember to carry the bum?"

-- Firesign Theatre

Even Excel 2013 can't handle 201 digit at once. Kudos.

Took calculus for business in college. Can probably not even do correct algebra now. People good at math seem like supermen or superwomen.

When I checked the link, I got thrown to this version of it and was wondering why people didn't find this weird or anything.

Well, that's Wikipedia for you.

And nobody bothered to ask her HOW she does it? It's not her like results couldn't be replicated in others who wanted to achieve the same through study and whatever particular techniques she employed.

Nobody bothered because we live with this myth that some people are born smart and others just don't have the juice.

Hey, it is not a mith

Some peaple are born with talent.

For some of us achieving the same results may still be possible but it will require a 100 times more hard work.

And for some others it's strait up impossible.

Extreamly smart pple are as real as extreamly dump ones. We live in that kind of word. We are not equal, as much as we would like to be

Actually, modern psychology shows that it is, in fact, a myth. The difference between people who are "born with talent" is interest: they worked hard for that "inborn talent" and you didn't, because you weren't interested enough in piano to bluntly practice scales and chords and all that boring shit.

Japanese students are all greatly more gifted in mathematics than American students. That gift is the magic of the Japanese teaching method: it turns normal humans into rapid-adding machines. It's not that their Asian brains have a high-tech floating point unit not available to white people; it's that they're taught to do that.

Very much regular people train themselves to have immensely powerful memories. This was a common thing hundreds of years ago, but is less-common now. It's a thing any normal person can do; in fact, people with exceptional memories are only those who have stumbled across techniques to chunk and serialize and visualize information on their own, and so are using more advanced techniques. None of them actually has a remarkable brain.

K. Anders Ericsson has studied what makes experts into experts, and figured out much of the procedural behaviors required. Applied psychology suggests motivation is key, and suggests how to create motivation (i.e. how to make goals meaningful and important). The combined understanding of modern science is that all people are essentially geniuses who have not been trained.

Talent is as much a myth as the Earth being flat.

Okay i am not going to cite any fancy study or anything. i'm just using common sense and some experience here; firstly, Isn't it natural for pple to be interested in things they are good at ? so finding out experts are interested in their fields isn't really surprising, but are they interested because they are good or are they good because they are interested ? probably both, i do believe interest helps you get better at stuff. but we don't all start from the same place nor do we face the same challenges when we learn, for some pple its a breeze for others it's a constant struggle

Secondly, and this is the experience part. i grew up with a neighbor my age, he was somewhat poor, his parents had no education and he basically spent all his time playing outside. he barely managed to have passing grades for most of his high school. and then one day another kid from class pissed him off, the kid happened to be at the top of the class. so my friend decided he would take that place. and he started studying with me. i always had good grades despite doing little to no homework but i liked the guy and didn't mind giving him some help. What i didn't know at the time was that my neighbor outclassed me in every aspect of learning capacity except maybe languages. that's the only thing i can think of where i was better than him. it didn't take much for him to learn, all he needed to do was actually take the time to read. soon he started correcting teachers, finding better ways to solve nasty math problems then the ones proposed in class. he rarely ever made mistakes. and he went from barely passable to freaking genius in 2 months. The guy didn't need me at all,as soon as he caught up i was the one asking questions. he had his unique way of thinking about problems, and he was bad at explaining how the thought about them. He was highly praised by our math, physics and philosophy teachers.

We went to different unis but heard a lot of stories of professors calling him a genius. i honestly believe he is one he baffled me more than i care to admit on too many occasions.

Isn't it natural for pple to be interested in things they are good at?

No. Our Finance Systems Manager is a really good accountant, but he fucking hates accounting. He instead made himself good at things he enjoys doing, and abandoned the accounting career.

What i didn't know at the time was that my neighbor outclassed me in every aspect of learning capacity except maybe languages. that's the only thing i can think of where i was better than him. it didn't take much for him to learn, all he needed to do was actually take the time to read.

You mean he had a strong interest in learning after being neglected in education and pissed off to the max by some know-it-all jackass?

Methinks you didn't attend your studies with enough motivation.

http://youtu.be/3wgdkFwvrEQ

Amazing calculation technique of Indian kids. Shows that with the right technique anyone can learn to calculate fast

but how was that even possible

I feel lucky when my checkbook balances.

There are many savant qualities of which our brains are capable, but consciousness blocks them because they aren't essential to survival and interfere with other abilities, possibly. I think this is what's behind so-called psychic abilities and intuition - a lot of amazing calculations and perception going on constantly behind the curtain,

What's the answer?

It's 22.

I have no idea, but I could get lucky and then someday I'll be the subject of my own TIL

Special program to test? Why didn't they just put her number to the exponent 23.

I don't get how people can do mental math like this in their head. Is it like a calculator to them, or what? Honestly, how do they do it?

That is just plain stupid to write programs for confirm if she was right.
I mean if you want to check somebody wouldn't you just go:
- O.K. What is the total of 47.3 multiplied by itself 23 times, and give her the final to reverse it.

She mastered the art of Vedic Mathematics, which made this humanly possible.

She used integration, thats why she was so fast

This is incredible. I have a hard time with basic algebra and this lady is practically a computer. The human mind is an incredible thing.

how do you say 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730?

Indian people

Respect..!

With (enough) identified savants around, there shouldn't be any unsolved math problems left. Maybe endless to prove, but we should be able to just pick a problem, find a savant and have them provide the answer... It might take them 5 minutes or 5 days... and take us 50 years to prove, but come on earth!

Being a calculator and getting a mathematician are 2 different things

I bet Rachel Riley could do it, she's a math magician.

Fuck. I sometimes miscalculate 8 + 6 in my head

Is there a need to make a program? Or couldn't you just take her answer to the 23 power to see if you get the number back. The power of inverse operations or something.

She was created by Intel

That's mental!

Homer: "...but you don't know Lisa, I mean she's so smart they hooked her up to a big computer to try to teach it some things, but she had so much knowlege, it overloaded, and then it got really hot and caught on fire! "

And yet she constantly allows herself to be shortchanged at the store!

Something something something spice.

Is this real?

And yet I'm here struggling with parabolas

Still having problems with my multiplication chart thingy, 24 years old.

I have been reading her books since my childhood. Her mathematical genius is very well documented and lauded.

The fact that a human brain is capable of such feats as hers and of people like Daniel Tammet or Kim Peek (Rain man) should have all of us questioning what else are we as a species capable of?

relevant

So that's what the red dot is for...

She knows that 1 weird trick...

What would happen if you asked her to divide by 0?

I use to see her in star plus advertisements and though it was bullshit it turns out other wise.

So she is a full Guild Navigator?

What a boss.

it is by will alone that I set my mind in motion

I can't even fucking comprehend how her brain works. To see on a higher level like that.......I'm like below average IQ so I'm having a hard time comprehending. I wish I could be this smaht.

strange coincidence that the answer: 546,372,891 has every digit 1-9?

So would it be possible to break down her technique such that an average person could understand the process? I'm sure it would take hours for someone to wrap their heads around it, but presumably it could be explained?

I see a new super hero movie coming out....The Human Calculator vs. Numero Uno!

I just want to hug her lol

well then, Madam Devi, what is the square root of 69?

Yes, but did she show her work in Common Core standards?

As someone who was and still is bad at math.

Huh?

All we need now is a the spice melange and we can have Dune.

This may be the only way to stop the machines and save John Conner

She'll be useful after the Butlerian Jihad

she lived one last 4/20 :')

And here I have everyone thinking I'm badass for being able to multiply two digit numbers in my head.

Woww, this lady should be a millionaire or something.

I feel like they have some shortcut they aren't sharing with the world...

How is that even possible....

This thread is gold.

We used to use airplanes to move computers. Now we use computers to move airplanes.

It would probably take me 50 seconds just to put it into a calculator

Yup, she's a mentat

I am sad that she is no longer living. :-(

I don't understand how they could have needed a computer to calculate the 23rd root. It implies they picked a number at random and it happened to have an even root.

I'm hoping they meant that they needed a computer to multiply 546,372,891 by itself 23 times to come up with the question for her.

Sounds like we have a mentat in our midst.

I want to see Alan Turing vs shakuntala devi

Where's dat Sapho juice?

She's a savant then.

How is it that she believed in astrology?

You start young with something like this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df3rfYrFhuE

If her and Scott Flansburg had a kid............

I guess she knows algorithm

I remember seeing her as the google display thingy last year, amazing is an understatement

looks like i have found one of the 4400 living in India..

I call BULLSHIT!

So she's a mentat, basically.

She gets her knowledge from Lucifer

Apart from crunching very big numbers, has she used this talent to give some kind of special insight or contribution to the study of math?

Why did they need a special program written to confirm her calculation? Didn't they know the answer when they gave her the problem (I assume so if the 23rd root was an integer)? Or is this just worded poorly?

she's the first confirmed mentat.

Also, no they didn't have to make a special program, there's a very efficient algorithm for finding the nth root.

9x9=81 You're welcome

"Stan Lee's Superhumans" and they had a guy on who could do square roots, multiplications, and division in his head faster than people could type it into a calculator. While they didn't have him do anything to this level of complexity, they did have him do a few that resulted in high digits.

you have to split it down to make it manageable? I'd lose track after breaking it down into more than a few calculations. That's what's so insane. ...

Ahh this one received mentat training on Ix it seems

Plot twist: She cheated.

Did anybody else read "metal collector" instead of "mental calculator"?

why didn't they just put her answer to the 23rd power? lol

How can some peoples brains have the computational power of well computers? eli5?

Because all peoples brains are far superior to computers.

Not for math

she just has a better algorithm

A real life mentat. Fascinating

I think you should have a look on this article about Shakuntala Devi: The Human Computer. http://on.hdtm.co/1f3aFQ8

2+2=5?

when you understand the pattern of maths, such enormous and unfathomable problems become much less so.

"Let's ask a question that even we don't know the answer to."

More like metal calculator... Such badassery.

This is amazing - is there any scientific understanding of how these people accomplish superhuman feats like this? Is it a unique process that anyone could theoretically adopt, or is there something fundamentally amazing about their neurobiology?? Crazy stuff.

mmm dat brain

She also wrote a book way ahead of it's time in India; in 1977 after a marriage with a homosexual man she was curious to learn more about them. After interviewing gay men in India, a gay couple from Canada, and a temple priest, she concluded that complete acceptance, not just tolerance and legality, was called for.

I was mostly confused about the special program part until I read hour long ago this was. Amazing how far we've come. This problem went from "special, noteworthy univac problem" to "give me half an hour and an arbitrary precision math library"

Other names: Human Computer

I feel sooo lost in this thread. My head hurts now.

Here's video of a rare US TV appearance by Shakuntala Devi, from Ricky Jay's Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women special: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzujv50pk38#t=5m20s

Poker players and fans may recognize a young Chris "Jesus" Ferguson verifying the calculations.

Mentat confirmed

We have found our ultimate human CPU.

Ama request?

That would be pretty cool, but she's dead :/

I'm betting that this lady knows exactly how magnets work.

and I can't even do college calculus without my brain exploding

She must have something special Indian-atomy of her brain.

She's a cyborg. Only answer I have.

Sad she died

Not to brag guys, but I have mastered the art of long division.

I was watching a youtube video about her yesterday for the first time and now this pops up on the front page. Hmm interesting.

She should have responded: "Cheese" , gave a knowing nod, and simply left it at that.

42?

That is just amazing. I couldn't even imagine doing something like that with a few hours, let alone 50 seconds!?

TIL "Matilda" exists.

Well how do we really define "intelligent"?

I think there's a difference where people study and master a science (math) than those who just have a weird way their brain functions.

Takes sip of sapho juice.

Yeah, but how much can she bench?

Her name is Shakuntala Devi, but her friends call her Lucy.

Well that's so astronomically superior to what I can do on my best day I think I'll just give up on life now. I literally feel as effective as a tree stump right now.

And I can barely add 3 digit numbers...

From the thumbnail it looks like Gus Sorola with lipstick

When I was younger, she came to my school in U.A.E. And we got to see her do her calculations first hand. It was truly remarkable.

And there I was thinking I'm a fucking hardcore in my Math classes.

So if they needed to develop a program just to check here answer, how did they even know a number multiplied by itself 23 times would even possibly result in that answer? Unless it wasn't a whole number i guess? My brain hurty.

My reaction to this thread

so what is the answer?

Patient zero for Aspergers

And I'm failing algebra 2

In other words, don't fuck with old Indian ladies.

2+2 is 5. See? I'm a smart mother fucker too. :)

I don't even know what the fuck a root of a number is, so far this has been something that has no practical purpose for me, even in engineering.

Er, did you go to school at some point? Most people learned it in about 3rd grade.

Maths in American schools appears to be highly accelerated compared to British schools. So what's going wrong?

I have been out of high school for 7 years, I had one math class in college where I had to use it, I haven't used it since and have forgotten what it even is.

Easy, just use the Make 10 strategy every 2nd grader learns...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentat

1$ for who calculates the answer to live universe and everything

get money, fuck bitches

well.. you're right..! 1$ /u/changetip

She sounds like a mathmagician.

Well, I can calculate tips pretty good.

This reminds me that this movie is in the pipeline.

That shit's BONKERS.

Being in mid twenties I can barely add.. I exaggerate but yeah..

Book on homosexuality[edit] In 1977, she wrote The World of Homosexuals, the first[15] study of homosexuality in India.[16] In the documentary For Straights Only, she says that her interest in the topic came out of her marriage to a homosexual man and subsequent desire to look at homosexuality more closely to understand it.[17]

The book, considered "pioneering",[18] features interviews with two young Indian homosexual men, a male couple in Canada seeking legal marriage, a temple priest who explains his views on homosexuality, and a review of the existing literature on homosexuality.[19] It ends with a call for decriminalising homosexuality, and "full and complete acceptance—not tolerance and not sympathy".[18] The book, however, went mostly unnoticed at the time.[20]

Ugh, so based

Is she considered a savant or gifted? Genius? IQ?

So she's a Mentat.

If I copied her homework, my teacher would have known I was full of shit.

You're a better man than I am. If anything, the presence of such people would be discouraging to me, knowing I could never approach anything like their abilities, and would forever be but the rankest of beginners in comparison to such ability.

This woman was my inspiration to major in math.

shackalacka

Can anyone shed some light on the science behind her abilities? Why is she able to calculate incredibly complex numbers and problems so fast?

That's is actually insane.

yeah, but does she know what's U + Me= ?

But that's calculus...

She can perform large mathematical computations in her head! So can a calculator! - Matilda

"she wrote a number of books..." wiki author laughs to himself.

Not to discredit at all, but I'm pretty sure* if you wanted UNIVAC to do literally anything, you had to write a special program.

*I wasn't there.

THings like this excite me because it tells me the human brain is capable of much more. Of course I am interested in how she functions in other avenues of life. Is she good at just one thing, and really amazing at it or is she advanced in many other things as well.

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion."

holy crap, i cant even give the square root of the number in a minute

Yeaaaaa... guess what...

http://i.imgur.com/NQHKSVE.gif

Should be cross posted to r/interestingasfuck

Also she spelled words good.

After she solved the equation she said, "How do you like 'dem apples?!?"

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

The Oracle

Relevant!

If she was a contestant on Countdown, I don't fancy my chances....

Cool, she's a Mentat.

Went to the page to read about human calculator, only to read about homosexuality.

But the important thing is we have to educate all these Mexicans because Obama

So she's a mentat?

Rain Man ain't got shit on this lady

Mentat

I'm thinking it's an exaggeration that a 201-digit number was considered a "large calculation" in 1977. At that time they had already calculated pi out to almost 2 million decimal places. 201 digits is trivial by comparison.

WOW if this is true that is amazing! The potential of the human brain really does amaze me. Makes me think if movies like "Limitless" have a point to them. Maybe we "can" unlock a portion of our brain that is subdued.

There are people who can remember specifics from a particular day 20 years ago like the day of the week and what they had for breakfast that day. That actress (Marilu Henner) on the TV show, Taxi, is one of them. Then there's that autistic who can recite a million digits after 3.14 for Pi.

It takes me that long to open a browser window and type... well, anything.

Word cloud out of all the comments.

Don't like this? Message me!

I had trouble calculating 5-3 this morning when I bought my coffee :|

I'm just glad that there are only 1/16th inch increments on my tape measuring device.

She's obviously a Mentat.

That lady is the gaw damn Devi-L.

She's a calculator and she's mental!

Even my calculator cant process that

TIL mentats exist

ITT: what she did wasn't that amazing guys

Useful skill to have if you're at the US Bureau of Standards and want to test your newly written program.

freak... or a robot, either way I'm cool with it

Her answer was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.

I was able to confirm her answer using a couple of lines of python. http://imgur.com/OHUOGuG

Edit: Now that I actually read the wiki page, I see that she did this in 1977. I guess they didn't have python handy to confirm her answers ;)

No Python, perhaps, but they did have arbitrary precision arithmetic libraries. As far back as the mid-50's, IBM had a computer that could calculate using digit strings as long as 511 digits, more than enough for this specific calculation.

Wouldn't it have been easier to verify it the other way around? As in, think of some number and then find its 23rd power and see if she could figure out the original number?

so what was the root?

Um, you could follow the link and find out.

nah, just gimme the number

Ah, okay. Turns out it was just 7.

Or:

Ctrl C then Ctrl V

Was she right tho

This lady visited my school in the early 90's in Mumbai. I must've been 7. My classroom was one of the few she spent some time in. She picked random kids out, asked them to tell her their birth date and would proceed to tell them what day of the week they were born on, in like a couple of seconds. She even taught us some some simple maths shortcuts. I'll be damned if i remember any of them. I think I still have one of her books lying around. Absolute legend. *Edited for clarity

this is amazing.

it's funny how some people can do this and other can't, funny how the brain works huh?

We haven't even gotten to the butlerian jihad and already we have mentats? Awesome!

Hmm. I curious now. I should check into that calculator guy that came out on TV and see if he has solved any math mysteries, or if he even tried.

Yeah, I remember when the news hits everywhere when she dead before a year.

A legend.

I thought it could be a trick, but between 10^200 and 10^202, there are more than 100 million perfect 23rd square roots.

Mentats are real

We learn math like we learn language, thus we form our math algorithms in Broca's area of the brain, which is used for speech synthesis and interpretation.

The day we figure out how to develop those algorithms in the motor cortex will be a great day for mankind indeed.

And she's down with the gays (according to the same wikipedia article). Love her!

awesome

A fifth grade student could check her answer by hand. It would take time and a good pile of paper but it is simple math to multiply a number by itself 22 times. Why did they need to design a program to do it? If her answer multiplied by itself 22 times = the question; then her answer is right. Seems like a lot of work to write a program when the check is elementary math. The final calculation would fit across four pages(~50 digits per page) and be six pages long (33 lines per page) using the vertical multiplication method we all learn in grade school.

[deleted]

[deleted]

He was making a joke that he could give an (incorrect) answer in less than 50 seconds.

But I'm betting she can't drive for shit.

Well she's dead, so...

...so, I was right..again. Vindication=achieved.

LMAOOO. such a shitlord

OK, I'll be 'Shitlord', if you'll be 'Gaylord'. In fact, let's make that 'Lord Gaylord' for extra blessings.

You know what this means. A witch!!!

I'm not a witch, I'm your wife. But after what you just said I'm not even sure I want to be that anymore!

Burn her anyway!!!

Wrong movie, but I like the cut of your jib.

I would be honored if this lady were to tutor me in math. I suck so much when it comes to math and numbers in general.

She came to New Jersey about a decade ago and I got the chance to go to her event. Watching her do the calculations live was pretty amazing.

She probably answer the questions right after she wrote it though.

What is 56x4? --224!!

She answers the questions before they are written.

well she is asian

AND she's a woman! For all you neanderthals who think that they still shouldn't have the vote!!!

somoene make the aliens guy meme with 'brains'

So halo is right. Future AI's will be based off the human brain.

Ah good, the Mentats are emerging. Maybe the Butlerian Jihad will start sooner than expected.

And how much my shitty casio calculator can handle that kind of calculation?

And how much my shitty casio calculator can handle that kind of calculation?

Indian mental calculator

I instantly imagined a calculator in a straight jacket with a red dot on its forehead..

ITT: People discussing how many digits of Pi they can remember.

Wow, when someone asks what I majored in in college, I usually joke that it was mental math... I didn't know there were astonishing mental mathematicians like this!

get her to calculate ack(G,G) where G is Grahams number

What kind of tiny number is that?

Ask her to calculate BBG(G), where G is Graham's number and where BBG is defined as the Busy Beaver function for the Gth Turing super machine which can solve the halting problem for the (G-1)th Turing super machine (a sequence which carries on down to a normal Turing machine).

Umm... Couldn't they just raise the number she gave to the 23rd and see if it was close instead of writing new software? That seems a bit BS.

They needed new software to calculate that number to the 23rd power, this was in the 1970s. Computers can't just deal with arbitrarily large numbers as they would any other.

And now if you go to the link, it states " for which a special fedora had to be worn to perform such a large calculation" Now the fucking assclowns who have been making comments on all the videos have started fucking with wikipedia articles for a laugh. Fuck these idiots!

Edit: Changed back in less than a minute. Impressive.

"In 2015, at /r/atheism, she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit Mountain Dew promotional code; she answered in 50 seconds."

Even more impressive, she seems to have done this while deceased, as she died April 2013.

Well indians did invent numbers as we know it so...

Fucking mentats.

Nothing is said of her mental state and I don't want to be "that guy" but isn't possible that she could be an autistic savant? (Closer to Aspergers really..)

There is nothing said about any tests being done with her to diagnose her. Because let's face it, it is a probability and a good one at that...

Still amazing that her brain could process this!

Yeah that's fine and all, but can she see why kids love the taste of cinnamon toast crunch?

Plot Twist: The guy that wrote the program is her nephew and told her the answer beforehand.

I have an idiot savant friend who can do this type of stuff. He puts bags on and off of planes at the airport. I don't know why they don't put these people to work in special jobs, checking other people's calculations or something.

I can count to 11 using both hands and my penis.

[deleted]

Are you that double dick guy from the AMA a few months ago?

Fuck that, I still haven't memorized my wife's cell phone number.

Not unlike this autistic man that can memorize a whole scene photographically to the point of absurdity.

Human mind has a lot more potential than we can imagine right now.

Truly amazing...

But "a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation"?

Seems like a pretty standard programming loop...

"special" does not imply "difficult"

special (adj) different from what is normal or usual

Not sure how its different from normal or usual, either. As I said, it's "standard".

Not to discredit her amazing ability, but 1977 computers weren't exactly the powerhouses we have in our pockets today.

lucky guess.

So I don't know how the hell that happened, nor how anybody would believe me. I swear when I clicked the reddit link to the wikipedia page, instead of "Shakuntala Devi", I had "dickbutt" written instead. I lost 10 minutes of my life just to show you how FUCKING WEIRD, kind of funny and scary at the same time it looked. http://imgur.com/JSMjWNv

PS : Still mindblowing performance.

Someone had edited the page.

Damn I knew I wasn't having hallucinations ! Thank you Reddit Sherlock.

Every program is special.

When people say it's bullshit that we only use 10% of our brains or mental capacity, it's people like this (and there is a lot of them) that make the average person look like an ape flinging it's own feces. I know that most people like this are very specialized and suffer autistic or developmental disabilities elsewhere, but it's just mind boggling that a human brain has this type of ability in it.

I wonder if her mind works like the algorithm...

hey, incase you are interested there is a radio lab episode about how before we learn to separate numbers by single units all people naturally think algorithmically, http://www.radiolab.org/story/91697-numbers/

i believe it was the first quarter of the show

No Snake, its that she learned to perform something similarly in her head using other means. Its really something.

Jihad Everywhere...

Machines killing humans in Drone strikes...

Now Mentats from the land of Spice...

I must not fear! Fear is the Mind-Killer!

I just want a still suit so I can play video games and not get up to piss.

Yeah, but you have to walk to work the filtration pumps. Checkmate.

I AM ALL OVER THIS THREAD!

She had a great brain i want little % of it

creepy compliment

why creepy u hatred?

why not so some honesty than hatred?

[deleted]

nerd.

So she's an idiot savant? I mean it sounds like she's an idiot savant

Edit: for those that don't know what an idiot savant it, it's not a bad thing. This type of person has amazing abilities like Shakuntala Devi. There is an idiot savant in the UK that can give you each number of pi, to the 500th place. I believe it took him a few hours. Idiot savants have a neurological issue, a part of their brain is damaged and then this happened. I believe with the young man in the UK, he was in an accident that caused head trauma.

When I say "idiot savant" I'm not saying these people are idiots. here is some more info about savants

edit 2: I guess reddit really does rely on "oh they have a 0, I'll just downvote too" method.

nine hundred sixteen quinsexagintillion, seven hundred forty-eight quattuorsexagintillion, six hundred seventy-six tresexagintillion, nine hundred twenty duosexagintillion, thirty-nine unsexagintillion, one hundred fifty-eight sexagintillion, ninety-eight novemquinquagintillion, six hundred sixty octoquinquagintillion, nine hundred twenty-seven septenquinquagintillion, five hundred eighty-five sexquinquagintillion, three hundred eighty quinquinquagintillion, one hundred sixty-two quattuorquinquagintillion, four hundred eighty-three trequinquagintillion, one hundred six duoquinquagintillion, six hundred eighty unquinquagintillion, one hundred forty-four quinquagintillion, three hundred eight novemquadragintillion, six hundred twenty-two octoquadragintillion, four hundred seven septenquadragintillion, one hundred twenty-six sexquadragintillion, five hundred sixteen quinquadragintillion, four hundred twenty-seven quattuorquadragintillion, nine hundred thirty-four trequadragintillion, six hundred fifty-seven duoquadragintillion, forty unquadragintillion, eight hundred sixty-seven quadragintillion, ninety-six novemtrigintillion, five hundred ninety-three octotrigintillion, two hundred seventy-nine septentrigintillion, two hundred five sextrigintillion, seven hundred sixty-seven quintrigintillion, four hundred eighty quattuortrigintillion, eight hundred six tretrigintillion, seven hundred ninety duotrigintillion, twenty-two untrigintillion, seven hundred eighty-three trigintillion, sixteen novemvigintillion, three hundred fifty-four octovigintillion, nine hundred twenty-four septenvigintillion, eight hundred fifty-two sexvigintillion, three hundred eighty quinvigintillion, three hundred thirty-five quattuorvigintillion, seven hundred forty-five trevigintillion, three hundred sixteen duovigintillion, nine hundred thirty-five unvigintillion, one hundred eleven vigintillion, nine hundred three novemdecillion, five hundred ninety-six octodecillion, five hundred seventy-seven septendecillion, five hundred forty-seven sexdecillion, three hundred forty quindecillion, seventy-five quattuordecillion, six hundred eighty-one tredecillion, six hundred eighty-eight duodecillion, three hundred five undecillion, six hundred twenty decillion, eight hundred twenty-one nonillion, sixteen octillion, one hundred twenty-nine septillion, one hundred thirty-two sextillion, eight hundred forty-five quintillion, five hundred sixty-four quadrillion, eight hundred five trillion, seven hundred eighty billion, one hundred fifty-eight million, eight hundred six thousand, seven hundred seventy-one

She would get so much more admiration and notoriety if she were white or Jewish

The math is strong with this one.

Currently on Wikipedia:

" In 2015, at /r/atheism, she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit Mountain Dew promotional code; she answered in 50 seconds.[1][4] Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special fedora had to be worn to perform such a large calculation.[14]"

I would just love to taser this bitch.

Why did they have to add in the part about her being a mental calculator ? We already knew she was Indian ..... feels kinda redundant to me

See, this is what humans can accomplish when using more than 10 percent of our brains. Wake up steeple!

I sometimes get confused multiplying 8x6 and 6x8

6x8 rhymes, so it's "six by eight, fortyeight!" when someones asks me 8x6, I activelly think about the correct answer.

I have IQ over 200, but simple shit like this kills me.

I have IQ over 200, but simple shit like this kills me..... ....I have IQ over 200 ...IQ over 200

All that time in the kitchen gets you real good with math what with adding cups of flour and the like, good for her.

Made me laugh out loud. Good one.

I have an ability to do higher end mathematics in my head without a calculator to an extent but this lady is in a league of her own. Somehow when i conceptualize the math it just works itself and i get an answer. I realized in elementary school that I could do it. I would finish long division problems in seconds. I could do full pages of math that took kids several minutes in seconds. I looked at the math and saw the answer. The teacher was stumped. Math test that takes 20 minutes in under 2. Longest part was that damn show your work.... what if you don't need to show your work wasn't a good question at 8 years old.

Yeah, but is she DTF?

But could she tie her own shoes?

She had sandals

Meanwhile, an American student was asked to add 2+2 on Christmas Day.

Still waiting for their answer...

yet, she still can't do common core

I'm pretty sure you can solve that problem with make ten.

546372891 is the answer

You left out the decimals, pfft.

You left out the decimals, pfft.

You left out the decimals, pfft.

You left out the decimals, pfft.

Wtf does 23rd root mean ok i remember 23rootx

23rd root would mean the same number raised to the 23rd power equals the number you are looking for the root of.

Link says over in /r/atheism. Anyone have that link?

It was already changed back. But this is what the text was:

http://i.imgur.com/oi14cHx.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shakuntala_Devi&oldid=643687603#Achievements

What a Mentat

The fact that people can do this likely means it's something that in the future we will be able to hack in order to make it more available to everyone. Imagine a world where everyone could perform at that level.

Everyone CAN perform at that level; you're just lazy.

There is a neural correlate to this specific ability that could be activated on demand with science but I'm not confident a regular person could just learn how to do this.

Nope, it's not that.

There is an algorithm to calculate arbitrary roots in any base number system. For nth root, you start dividing the number at the decimal place into n units:

  • sqrt(523.251928) :: 5|23.|25|19|28
  • cubert(523.251928) :: 523.|251|928

After that, you use a simple algorithm which works the same for square roots, cube roots, and so on.

The first thing you'll notice is the immense number of digits to juggle. Calculating the 23rd root of a 201-digit number isn't hard: it'll block into 9 parts, with the first being 17 digits, the other 8 being 23 digits; but you have to do a lot of computations on a lot of digits. Further, you have to find 23rd roots in the process, at least in reverse: you have to raise numbers to the 23rd power in an estimation search. Fortunately, these will all be single-digit roots.

If you've configured a PAO system, this isn't a problem: you just set up a register environment and store your working registers with a PAO system. Juggling the handful of numbers is suddenly not an issue. Mental athletes typically use mind palaces for register memory.

Calculating the eight 23rd roots isn't a problem, either. To raise a number to the 23rd, square it repeatedly: ((n^2)^2)^2)^2 = n^16. Then take the prior value (n^8) and divide it by that number to get n^7. Multiply these together. I use this method because doubling is easy; you can find an easier way if you like.

Most people who do rapid mental multiplication have memorized the entire multiplication table from 1x1 to 9x9. This makes multiplying a number by itself easy; division is considerably harder. You can easily multiply two numbers together in one straight run with lattice multiplication.

Each time you calculate a single-digit number raised to the 23rd, memorize it. This is easy with a PAO system, although slow: people typically try to member 500 digits in 5 minutes, whereas you'd have to memorize at worst some 137 digits (80 seconds would be a ridiculously high speed). It is possible to reduce this at the lower ends, where 2^23 has 7 digits and 3^23 has 11, by recognizing less than 7 digits as less than 2^23 and 8-10 digits as less than 3^23: some luck will avoid this, and as well you can partially calculate the most significant digits.

Once you have enough of a look-up table to do the computation, you just burn through it with a few seconds spent on each number. It's only 9 digits of output.

It would take you probably a year of study and drilling for at least a half hour per day to build a PAO system capable of handling this, as well as the skill to use it. You'd also need maybe a half hour of drills with various mathematics techniques, including the Soroban techniques and Napir's Bones techniques (i.e. lattice multiplication). You'd still have to drill in the algorithms for calculating roots; you won't be able to do arbitrary roots unless you break down, understand, and exercise formulating the algorithms for general roots in your head. If you memorize the 8 basic 23rd roots, you can do 23rd root calculations in several seconds in your head; otherwise, you will need to compute them as you go.

It would be a thoroughly exhausting amount of work; but, at the end of it, you could pull this off. It would almost certainly not be worth the effort.

TIL that Mentats actually exist.

Lucky guess.

And nobody bothered to ask her what half of π was. I am disappoint.

But she didn't show her work so she got an F.

Yeah...I can't math like that

ELI5?

Get her to do it again with a different number and then get back to me.

EDIT Read the article, I'll see myself out now.

Lucky guess.

They are called mentats.

TIL should just be called "random wikipedia tidbit of the day"

and i'm just sitting here counting on my fingers

Banana for scale? My head hurts trying to process this.

Nerd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentat

In a few years, once they get genetic engineering perfected, can they give me this ability?

I don't get this fascination with this. It's a useless skill and nothing to do with science/math.

Yea, because we never use math in everyday life. Like being able to add up all your groceries in your head before you get to the checkout when you have limited funds would be useless and being able to look at two prices of two different sizes and know instantly which is the better deal wouldn't be of any use. And knowing the dimentions of your driveway and knowing how many paving stones you need would not be handy because we NEVER use math in real life.

There is a difference between quick mental calculations based on understanding the math behind them and these circus type freaks. This whole story reminds me of Feynman v abacus salesman story: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/feynman.htmlhttp://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/feynman.html

So she's autastic?

She's also quite the pioneer in promoting homosexuals' rights in India

Just the facts that the 201-digit starting number is a power of 23, has 201 digits, and starts with a 9 gives the first two digits of the answer.

In fact the first eight digits of the starting number completely determines the answer.

She had pretty much a 10% chance of taking a stab in the dark and getting it. Not making any accusations, jut throwing that out there.

She had a 10% chance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqhSaxKS9OQ

I mean, how hard could that program have been to write? I could do it in MATLAB in an hour, and I'm a shitty programmer.

Just use a 1 x 201 array with one integer per array.

Probably the program they had didn't use number types with sufficient accuracy to guarantee a correct result.

What is a "23rd root"? As in to the -23rd power? Because if I use 546,372,891^23, the number she needed to calc the -23rd power for would be 9.2e+200. Windows calc only has like 30 digits past the decimal.

maybe somebody asked her that one once...

i'll take 'useless talents' for the 23rd root of a 201-digit number dollars, Alex.

Is she a good conversationalist?

But can she cook?

How are her sandwich making skills though

Pah, she just might be an very good guesser.

dat smug look

But she forgot the other 22 roots.

Either that or she guessed. 1 /10 isn't bad odds for such a ridiculous calculation.

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819

Cannabis is legal in India.

Must be the curry

So, what was the 201 digit number?

I bet she doesn't know what 9+10 is though

Impressive, but I don't think this chick has shit on Daniel Tammet.

Dude can recite Pi out to like the ~22500th digit in a little over 5 hours. There's a documentary on Netflix about him. Look it up and watch it !

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet

To have that many memory registers unlocked in the human brain! It's like he jailbroke the human brain !

I'd like to think that she has some sort of deficiency like maybe she's ugly or she has horrible people skills, because she spent all her life doing numbers or something.

Slum-dog Calcul-aire

Get back to me when she ends hunger in India.

But can she cook a steak?

I shall choose to remain skeptical. Not disbelieving, but definitely skeptical. People are certainly capable of astounding mental feats, but 201 digits is a LOT of digits and 23rd root is a LOT of roots.

so, what kind of autism did she have?

[deleted]

And your contribution to the world is an idiotic comment on Reddit. Fuck off.

Dat lipstick tho

They must have known the answer beforehand. If they had chosen a random 201 digit number they would have almost certainly had an answer with a decimal. I don't see how they needed to create a program to check her answer, the program must have been designed to provide the problem itself.

Edit: I may have misinterpreted the title.

[deleted]

Astrology is all math. You don't have to believe it.

Really? In what aspect is astrology math? [Serious question]

Because once you get beyond the level of, you're a tauras, you like order. You get into what house each planet was in and that means actually calculating the positions of the planets for any given point in time. It's fuck tons of math.

Here's a PDF about it if you're interested.

I call bullshit.

I call BS

Let me add that to the list of reasons why she would make an excellent cashier at a 7-11.

Should be in /r/creepy

Yet the caste system is alive and well and she poops the dirt....

"lucky guess..."

But seriously, does she have autism because this is the kind of thing autistic people can sometimes do?

Yeah this has hoax written all over it. Especially since it was in India, where everyone is trying to set a record for something to set them apart from the other Billion people.

The brain is not a calculator. It is a conduit to divine logic. Some people's brains are wide open to recieve it. Most others have to break down problems into smaller pieces where we have memorized the answers.

[deleted]

India is in Asia...

Technically, India is its own sub-continent.

~~This is absurd, any modern calculator above the basic solar powered kind will let you do arbitrary power calculations.~~

~~Granted, you might not be able to type in ~201 digits in the 50 seconds it took her to calculate this, but it is a trivial task that does not require "special programming"~~

Never mind, I'm an idiot.

So you didn't click the link and read it then?

It was 1977. Computers were still the size of buildings.

Thanks for pointing that out.

My TI-84 Plus SE can't... I know there are still newer ones, but I haven't used any of them.

But can she cook?

Autism

Great.

But isn't it slightly rude to call someone a "mental calculator" sound robotic to me.

Vedic style calculations is neat, but once you see it for what it is its....meh neat.

is it actually better the "western" styles of math?

yeah but did she ever dankmeme?

so what good is she?

I believe this is less extraordinary than what it seems. The actual result is an integer, which means that most probably the question was built by actually elevating the answer to the 23rd power (powers and multiplications are by far much easier than divisions). She must have guessed that, so she started with a fairly big number, elevated to the 23rd power, and checked if the result was the number in the question. From there, with binary searching algorithm, I believe it's rather "easy" to find the correct answer. Plus, the candidates can be by a factor of 6 (and more) by using simple divisibility rules.

The power step can be simplified. You got x\^23 = x*x\^2*(x\^2)\^2*(((x\^2)\^2)\^2)\^2, that is you need to calculate x2 = x\^2, x4 = x2\^2, x8 = x4\^2, x16 = x8\^2 and multiply together x, x2, x4, x16. That accounts for a total of "only" 7 multiplications of big numbers.

That doesn't really seem less extraordinary. You've just broken down the problem into a set of steps, but none of those steps are particularly easy.

notice the double quotes.

Yeah but when are you gonna use this in the real world.

real world

Shakuntala Devi lived in the Matrix?

I don't believe it for a second.

What about feminism though? I thought men block women from doing teh maths!

" In 1977, at Southern Methodist University, she was asked to give the 23rd root of a 201-digit number; she answered in 50 seconds.[1][4] Her answer—546,372,891—was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation. On 18 June 1980, she demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers—7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779—picked at random by the Computer Department of Imperial College, London. She correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in 28 seconds."

It's not very impressive when someone can complete mental calculations in a far longer time period than it would take for a computer to do the exact same thing. If the above quote represents her main achievement in the field of Math, then she contributed absolutely nothing substantive to the field.

There's just no way you can say mentally multiplying two 13 digit numbers isn't impressive, doing it in under 30 seconds is ridiculous and would have been considered sorcery 200 years ago. Write those numbers out and time yourself solving it by hand, if you can do it in 2 minutes I'd legitimately be impressed. It's not meant to represent her contributions to the field of Math but rather how remarkable her ability was.

I'm baffled by how baffled everyone is at this performance. I take the software any day and "meh." at you.

You do know this happened in 1977, right?

I call bullshit.

I can't do it so nobody else can

Guess how I know you have autism.

What the fuck are you talking about?

He's saying you're mentally retarded. That's why you can't comprehend somebody doing such large calculations.

Fear not, there are many mental institutions at your service to help you recover. It gets better if you put in effort to improve your mental capacity.

Look at you, walking around with your 165 IQ. I am impressed. I wish I were like you.