Meet Aaryan Shukla, a 14-year-old boy from India, and one of those kids who has this mysterious ability to do mathematics in his head–very rapidly. Here he tries to set a number of Guinness records in one day. He set six!
The records (he tried for ten): all involve the speed with wich Aaryan got a successful answer.
Adding 100 4-digit numbers
Adding 200 4-digit numbers
Adding 50 5-digit numbers
Dividing a 20-digit number by a 10-digit number
Multiplying two five digit numbers (a set of 10)
Mutiplying two eight-digit numbers (a set of 10)
Of course you could produce an infinite number of categories to test, but it’s clear this young man has amazing abilities. Does anyone know how he does it? I have no idea! And I wonder if this skill could help him get a job, or whether his abilities translate into other abilities that could secure lucrative employment.
Fascinating – There’s a guy … was on Dave Letterman’s show … Daniel Tammet. He explains a bit of his talent on that clip and in a talk … he wrote some books too … perhaps a reader can find it I’m distrac—
-ted.
He is a savant with Asperger Syndrome, and he possesses many talents that ranges from math writing and learning languages. His abilities may be supported by a kind of synesthesia, where he visualizes numbers as having colors, distinct shapes, and personalities. There is more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet
He is also a fraud. But unlike better memory champions he tells a great story with somewhat esoteric nonsense. And people are credulous in this area because they do not know how trainable these mental abilities are.
You know what – after watching Tammet’s TED talk, I found myself wondering about how fantastical his story sounds …
I think he’s really able to calculate and memorize, and interpret language and poetry — and I read below you categorize this perhaps accurately as “technician” — but he’s saying there’s all these colors, and shapes … OK, what can I say?!
BTW I heard a “math magic” guy talk about how he does these incredible math feats – but he basically explains it – there wasn’t a fantastical ability – it’s simply what anyone can do, but they’re so familiar with the thought process – like a musician like Martha Argerich with a piano concerto – like, wayyyy more than you think – it … looks “magical”…. or whatever.
With Argerich one can at least understand that she is extremely talented and went through lots of training — there are other world-class pianists to compare her to. But I have done the calendar trick myself and people usually viewed it as sign of deeply mysterious genius! (Memorizing pi is also surprisingly awe-inspiring. A few phone numbers!) They did not have any tools to assess such abilities.
(Personally I find basic knowledge of intelligence research often useful. E.g. there is a nothing about Christopher Langan or his parents that suggests high intelligence to me, and given how heritable it is… Not to mention that having the highest IQ score is a silly notion etc.)
This might be asked in a clumsy way, but here goes: From an evolutionary biology standpoint, why would this ability emerge? Also, is this kid a “freak” of nature, or is his mathematical ability something many people could do but is somehow “repressed” in most of us?
Steven Pinker indelibly (IMHO) suggested spandrels once for some thing that sort of materializes as a consequence of what surrounds it…
Dawkins also (indelibly), but using the construction of a stone archway to model it…
… and I’m up to >50% the comments, PCC(E) I’ll try to lay out now!
I believe that the notion of “spandrels” in evolution was proposed by Steve Gould and Dick Lewontin in 1979, not by Pinker.
Definitely. It’s a very famous paper.
Super – thanks – and I remember now that Pinker was saying music is a spandrel created by language…
Speaking of Gould, he had a son with a learning disability, but who had the ability to name the day of the week given a date [“March 16, 1843.”]. Gould compared him to the Dustin Hoffman character in “Rainman.” He discusses his son in his book “Questioning the Millennium.” The son explained how he did it; despite his disability, he figured out the trick on his own, but I haven’t read the book since it was published, so I don’t remember the solution.
It seems like a talent question — is there such a thing or is it just a matter of hard work? To me talent is real. But what I find interesting is that this sort of skill is even possible from a “meat machine.” Talent, I would say, is a type of intelligence and has a genetic basis, and is strongly affected by environment (math classes, music lessons, etc).
Amazing. The son of my Ph.D. thesis advisor could state the day of the week I was born if I told him my birth date and the year. There must be an algorithm for that, but he could blurt out the day almost instantly. He was no more than about 10 years old at the time.
anchor dates
4/4
5/9
6/6
7/11
8/8
9/5
10/10
11/7
12/12
… share the same day of the week leap year or not.
… months 1, 2, 3 left as an exercise for the reader.
This reminds me of the actress Marilu Henner, from the show ‘Taxi’, who can remember what she did on every day of her life since she was 12 years old. Not necessarily a blessing, but amazing nonetheless.
The algorithm is easy, though it is impressive to be able to do it quickly in one’s head
Normal years advance the day of the week by one day since 365 = 52×7 + 1. Leap years shift by two. Thus the shift is nonleap + 2 x leap or, equivalently total years + leap years.
Today is Sunday, March 9, 2025. Suppose I want to know March 9 in 2002. Total years is 23. There are 6 leap days (six occurrences of February 29) between these dates (2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024). Thus shift = 23 + 6 = 29 =1. (I say 29 = 1 since they differ by a multiple if 7). Thus the day shifted by 1, so I conclude March 9, 2002 was a Saturday.
To use this trick for historical dates, you need to know that 2000 was a leap year, but 1800 and 1900 were not. Knowing that and knowing that July 4, 2025 will be a Friday, I can deduce that July 4, 1776 was a Thursday.
When you count leap years, remember that you are counting leap days, so if one or both of the endpoint years is a leap year, it makes a difference if the date you are calculating was before or after February 29. Also, if the time interval is large, it is inefficient to list and count the leap years since there are many of them. The easy way is this: if a list of consecutive multiples of 4 begins with m and ends with n, the number of numbers on that list is (n – m)/4 + 1. For example, I claimed that July 4, 1776 was a Thursday. To count leap years I ignored 1776 since the leap day that year occurred before July 4. The relevant list of multiples of 4 begins 1780 and ends 2024. The number of relevant multiples of 4 is therefore (2024-1780)/4 + 1 =62. But since 1800 and 1900 were not leap years, there were 60 leap years. Total years is 2025 – 1776 =249. The total shift is 249 + 60 which resolves to 1 module 7.
I used to teach an elementary college course for nonmajors called “Math Excursions”. Students rather liked learning the trick to calculate days of the week.
For historical dates this is relevant only back to the 1760s since before that they used the Julian calendar.
+1
Good stuff!
No anchor dates. Just memorise a list of year codes (more without century codes) together with the month codes. That’s how everyone does it.
Presumably it’s largely innate since Aaryan is only 14 and there’s other know savants with similar abilities. He probably couldn’t explain how he does it himself. Though there is a guy named Arthur Benjamin who can do a similar thing but also has given lectures and written books about how to learn it.
Savant is a newer word for freak. Vague enough to include anything from unusual brains (Peek), technicians (every memory/mental arithmetic champion), technicians who are also frauds (Tammett) and anyone with an uncommon interest in certain topics. Skepticism is sadly rare when such people are discussed.
What he was doing with his hands reminds me of kids that have been taught with an abacus. When they have reached a certain level of proficiency, they no longer need a physical abacus, but rather they manipulate an imaginary one. http://www.youtube.com/shorts/JvqCIfAkZQI