Holy Crap that is so funny.
MAILBOX!
Do you like kitties?
Not funny enough? This can't FAIL.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Mathemagician
Ok! Let's start.
I know how he does the calendar thing. It is just a bunch of memorization. My husband taught me to do that. Each year has a number assigned to it. Each month has a number assigned to it. Then you add the day of the month. Then you divide by seven and take the REMAINDER and that tells you the day of the week. I was going to write this all out but hmmm, the internet knows everything so here it is. And if you can memorize all that, then there is an algorithm for getting the year pretty quickly. You can see him doing that in the 1800's example. Still lightning fast though.
He shows you his secrets to squaring. It is just multiplying in your head and storing the numbers by tying them to words. Super sexy technique, well at least to geeks. Jaden can multiply 2 digit numbers in his head already. (His handwriting sucks.) And that guy only did 3 digits by 3 digits. Jaden can get there I'm sure.
The key to 5 digits was that he broke it down into 3 parts. This problem would have been MUCH harder if he had not squared it just because of all the numbers to remember. NOTICE he WROTE down the number to square so to release that part of his storage capacity to paper. But he still had to capture incredible amount of data in head at once. But you know your phone number right? I'm sure you know lots of phone numbers. He can just do it quickly. Just practice. Oh and he has mnemonics to help him. He has tied three digit numbers to words through a formula so that he can remember them.
Upon second watching, I figured out some of his mnemonics. He said cookie for 77. K sounds stands for 7s. He needed a word with two k's so he picked cookie. The next word was fishing? Or at least the f, s, n sounds. Those represent different numbers. So you can create words out of numbers to help you remember them. Get it?
The speed of this is very very impressive. I think ADHD folks have this capability. They can FOCUS incredibly when interested. Unfortunately, IMO, they are bored by our world. Imagine that. But we can fix all that . . ..
Let's see he did three "tricks." The third was to deduce the 7th digit when given 6 in any order. I don't know how he did that but . . . here is my guess. The number he did was a multiple a 9 AND we all know that all multiples of nine, when you sum the numbers, sum to 9. I'll give an example: 7x9=63 ok 6+3=9. Another example: 12x9=108 ok 1+0+8=9. Try it. It is true.
Now, the participants gave him 6 out of the 7 numbers of their resultant. All he had to so was figure out what those 6 numbers summed to--clearly a trivial task for him--then subtract that from 9 and viola.
BUT what if he did have a number which was a multiple of 9. Aha! He always will--almost. He asked for numbers from the audience, four numbers. Well, there is a 1 out of 3 chance that each number could be a multiple of 3 right. And with 4 numbers that means statistically that (.6*.6*.6*.6=.13) 87% of the time he'll have a number with which to use. And somehow, I suspect he has a backup plan for the other 13% of the time. Anyway, if you SQUARE a multiple of 3, what do you get????? Yep, a multiple of 9. BINGO we are off to the races.
So, clever, yes. Lovable, yes. Outrageously smart, nah. Magical, definitely no. But that man has a HELL of a memory!
I know how he does the calendar thing. It is just a bunch of memorization. My husband taught me to do that. Each year has a number assigned to it. Each month has a number assigned to it. Then you add the day of the month. Then you divide by seven and take the REMAINDER and that tells you the day of the week. I was going to write this all out but hmmm, the internet knows everything so here it is. And if you can memorize all that, then there is an algorithm for getting the year pretty quickly. You can see him doing that in the 1800's example. Still lightning fast though.
He shows you his secrets to squaring. It is just multiplying in your head and storing the numbers by tying them to words. Super sexy technique, well at least to geeks. Jaden can multiply 2 digit numbers in his head already. (His handwriting sucks.) And that guy only did 3 digits by 3 digits. Jaden can get there I'm sure.
The key to 5 digits was that he broke it down into 3 parts. This problem would have been MUCH harder if he had not squared it just because of all the numbers to remember. NOTICE he WROTE down the number to square so to release that part of his storage capacity to paper. But he still had to capture incredible amount of data in head at once. But you know your phone number right? I'm sure you know lots of phone numbers. He can just do it quickly. Just practice. Oh and he has mnemonics to help him. He has tied three digit numbers to words through a formula so that he can remember them.
Upon second watching, I figured out some of his mnemonics. He said cookie for 77. K sounds stands for 7s. He needed a word with two k's so he picked cookie. The next word was fishing? Or at least the f, s, n sounds. Those represent different numbers. So you can create words out of numbers to help you remember them. Get it?
The speed of this is very very impressive. I think ADHD folks have this capability. They can FOCUS incredibly when interested. Unfortunately, IMO, they are bored by our world. Imagine that. But we can fix all that . . ..
Let's see he did three "tricks." The third was to deduce the 7th digit when given 6 in any order. I don't know how he did that but . . . here is my guess. The number he did was a multiple a 9 AND we all know that all multiples of nine, when you sum the numbers, sum to 9. I'll give an example: 7x9=63 ok 6+3=9. Another example: 12x9=108 ok 1+0+8=9. Try it. It is true.
Now, the participants gave him 6 out of the 7 numbers of their resultant. All he had to so was figure out what those 6 numbers summed to--clearly a trivial task for him--then subtract that from 9 and viola.
BUT what if he did have a number which was a multiple of 9. Aha! He always will--almost. He asked for numbers from the audience, four numbers. Well, there is a 1 out of 3 chance that each number could be a multiple of 3 right. And with 4 numbers that means statistically that (.6*.6*.6*.6=.13) 87% of the time he'll have a number with which to use. And somehow, I suspect he has a backup plan for the other 13% of the time. Anyway, if you SQUARE a multiple of 3, what do you get????? Yep, a multiple of 9. BINGO we are off to the races.
So, clever, yes. Lovable, yes. Outrageously smart, nah. Magical, definitely no. But that man has a HELL of a memory!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
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