Posted on 02/19/2005 6:45:18 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
A small quibble with this sentence from the article: "Now he is 26, and a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places." Tammet is not a mathematical genius, as human calculating prodigies almost never are. It's a mistake to equate the ability to do astonishing mental calculations with aptitude for pure mathematics. While it's true that some great mathematicians have also been great calculators—for example, Newton, Euler, and Gauss—not all great mathematicians are great calculators—for example, Alexander Grothendieck. Indeed, Grothendieck, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, has admitted to not being very good at arithmetic, and there's a pretty funny story told about him (you can find it in this article on page 1196):
One striking characteristic of Grothendieck’s mode of thinking is that it seemed to rely so little on examples. This can be seen in the legend of the so-called “Grothendieck prime”. In a mathematical conversation, someone suggested to Grothendieck that they should consider a particular prime number. “You mean an actual number?” Grothendieck asked. The other person replied, yes, an actual prime number. Grothendieck suggested, “All right,take 57.”
Ping
bump flag to read before my little, or last, theorem...
It added up!
That is about the most interesting piece of journalism I ever recall reading in the Guardian.
Apparently homosexuality did, too.
I knew my obsession with prime numbers would pay off some day.
Wow. Bump.
Dang!!! I should have read the rest of the article.
I don't think is math is all that good now.
Amazing coincidence, I'm an idiot savant. Well, except for the savant part...
Um, not that there is anything wrong with that.
btt
Amazing coincidence, I'm an idiot savant. Well, except for the savant part...
Well, at least you've got part of that alphabet thing under control...how're you coming with the rest of it?
There's plenty wrong with that.
Just a Seinfeld line, we agree.
I thought Leslie Lemke sparked Dustin Hoffman to do "Rainman."
Lots to think about here.
This is an absolutely fascinating story.
Thanks for posting.
The same thought struck me as I was reading that.
The acid test of mathematical ability is to see how well the person can deduce a proof of theorem he's never seen before. That eliminates all of this memorizing/speed calculating tricks (not that they aren't in and of themselves impressive.) Notice also that these people are "recalling" the value of pi, not calculating it. To them, the value of pi is no differnt than the names/phone numbers in a phone book.
The impression I get from the description is that these folks have a fundamentally different "wiring" (firmware?) in their brains. It is as though they were a computer that was programmed to do ONE thing really well (data I/O and storage), at the expense of virtually every other brain function.
Notice also the strong flavor of OCD described in the behavior: things have to be done in the exact same order and time every day, shopping is uncomfortable because their mind is overloaded with possibilities they feel compelled to explore, and so one. In a sense it's almost like a combination of a brain hard-wired for memory acccess, overlaid with OCD and ADD.
As impressive as some of the feats are, it doesn't sound very pleasant to me.
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