math savant

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arnie

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In my business I work with kids from the special ed dept of our local high school. They can get a couple of hours a week of hands-on work experience. Most of them are relatively high functioning, but this quarter I'm working with a guy who is quite severely autistic. He can't carry on a conversation, he sort of jumps around a lot, needs to be redirected and kept on task a lot, etc. When his teacher brought him in to meet me, she and I were trying to talk and he was being kind of disruptive. She wrote some 4 and 5-digit numbers on a piece of paper and said he likes to multiply so that would keep him busy. I was thinking busy for 5 minutes at least, but he took maybe 5 seconds to multiply two 5 digit numbers! He pretty much would do it as fast as he could write. Didn't show any work or anything, just looked at the numbers and wrote down the answer. As if we were doing 1st grade addition problems! I was amazed, and the teacher said, "Yes, that's how fast he does the problems, and don't bother to check them because they are right. Always." Over the weeks I have had him add up my books for me, which was actually quite useful because it's something I don't like to do. I have also helped him learn a few things about working on bicycles, and he is really not too bad at that, but his math skills are amazing. I had a bank statement with 27 numbers on it, from 3 to 6 digits, and he added them up in about 20 seconds. Again, just looking and then writing the answer. He was in today and I gave him two 8-digit numbers to multiply. (yes, eight digits apiece!). He took the paper into the work area (he usually just does the problem wherever he happens to be), sat down on the floor and looked at the paper, looked away, moved the paper around a little, looked around the shop, and after about 30 seconds of that he wrote down the 16 digit answer! Again, no work or anything. Just the answer! I checked it on my calculator just for the heck of it. The calculator only goes to 8 digits, but the first 8 were correct so I'm sure the rest of it was, too. Isn't that amazing? He also has a really good memory, and an almost Rain-Man like ability to count stuff. He can pour tiny objects back and forth between his hands, and after doing that 2 or 3 times he will know how many there are, and I'm talking maybe 150 little cable tips or something. His teachers say he does that with puzzle pieces, too, and is always right, even when there are hundreds of pieces. I counted the cable ends after the first time he had (he said there were 142) and I got a different answer. I then carefully counted them again and put them in piles of ten, and it turned out that he had been right.
Anyhow, I just thought I would share that, since we all have a certain interest in how brains work. Also, even though we have all probably read about math savants it is much more amazing to see them in action.

Cheers!
 
That is amazing. I've never met one in person, but sure would be overwhelmed if I did. The brain is SO amazing!
 
When I was in counseling during high school to get help bringing my grades up, I learned a lot. I had an IQ test and was tested for learning disabilities. That was when I learned I was dyslexic, had a similar listening problem, but excelled with numbers. Nothing near that, but in early high school, I was at a college level. In fact, I could have a phone number laid out in front of me and be able to instantly memorize it and recite it forwards or backwards.

Luckily he just happened to be reading up on "absence seizures" because that is how I ended up in a neurologist's office. ;)

Once again, the brain is a funny thing. I guess our brains do have a mind of their own. :D
 
Just in case you were wondering, the problem I gave him was 64,728,695 X 43,174,269. The answer is 2,794,614,089,948,955. What number is that, even? 2 quintillion something? Again, he did that 100% in his head, and it took him about 30 to 40 seconds. I didn't time him, but I wish I would have. I have no idea how he does it, but I KNOW it ain't like we would multiply things in our head, nor is it all the steps we would take in writing it out. I wish he could explain his thought processes, but there is no way he can.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what he will be able to do with those abilities.
 
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I wonder if there really is a "thought process". Maybe it's just automatic.
 
I wonder if there really is a "thought process". Maybe it's just automatic.

I wish I knew. I guess I don't really think it's a "process" in the way we would think of it, but somehow something goes through his head, or he sees patterns or shapes or something and then the answer is there. I don't know . . .
 
When I was trying to go back to school I brought a math problem to my teacher that really stumped him and he said he knew when it was over his head.It was the quadrasion equasion that my dh did.
 
arnie

That is some problem to give him and even better he gave you the answer. That is an amazing ability.
 
It is amazing! And it gives you some idea of the unusual and unpredictable potential of our brains. One formula of genes plus environment produces a math savant. Mix the formula a different way and you get someone like me (utterly dependent on a calculator, with a tendency to mix up my right and left.).
 
William was at the shop again today and I decided to see how he would do on an even harder problem than the 8-digit times 8-digit one in the first post. I also observed him and timed him. The problem this time was 2,345,761,137 X 4,861,359,421. As in the first problem, he sat on the floor, looked at the problem, looked around, picked up random things, smelled some of them, looked back at the paper. Stuff like that. He in no way looked like a person solving such a ridiculously hard problem in his head. Unlike the first post, I timed him on this one. (In retrospect, I think he took more than 30 seconds to solve the problem in the first post. I wasn't really timing him and I think I underestimated his time. This time I was watching the clock.) After about 5 1/2 minutes he wrote down the 20-digit answer: 11,403,588,002,770,621,677. My little desk calculator doesn't come close to computing that, but I had no reason to think he had made a mistake. Later on one of my friends came in who had a better calculator on his I-phone, and was able to solve the problem to 16 digits. Naturally, those first 16 were right, and the last digit is also correct. I'm not going to try any larger numbers on him, I don't think, but I wonder at what point he would not be able to solve the problem? Fascinating, ain't it?
 
Very amazing friend you have, arnie. I hope you will keep sharing the stories. One theory is that autistic savants have an amazing ability to block out things we non-autistics cannot, both external and internal stimuli, thoughts, etc. Would be nice to be able to do that sometimes!
 
if he has even minor people skills, a future in accounting, or as a broker may be up his alley. you would be amazed to talk some of those guys how many asperger's cases and other you run into.
 
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