human calculators

Natural Human Lightening Calculators are rare and usually cannot explain the techniques used. It is possible to learn (and develop) techniques for lightening calculation. Good mathemations tend to use the latter. Some matetations; however, are lousy at arithmetic.

The greatest mathmetician of all times, Karl Fredrick Gauss, as a boy was once given a busywork assignment of summing all digits fron 1 to 100. Gauss replied almost at once 5050 (the correct answer). He realized that 1+99=100, 2+98=100, 3+97=100 all the way down to 49+51=100 and when you add all 50 of them together you get 5000. The only number not accounted for is 50--so the sum is 5050.

Pretty good for a kid who didn't know that Euclid solved the problem almost 2000 years before (sum=100*101/2=11000/2=5500).

Srinivasa Ramanujan one of the greatest potential mathematic talents
of history was known to be a lightening calculator and would entertain english twits with this ability. However, his sponsor at Cambridge, GH Hardy, knew better--Ramanujan used mathematic logic. Unfortunately his health was poor and he died young being a vegetarian Hindi in a country known for eating bolded sheep tripe.

I once knew a natural lightening calculator in the hills of Appalachia. Bob was a wonderful person, simple and complex all at the same time. Friendly and trusting to a fault. In addition to being a lightening calculator he had a didatic memory and could play any song on any string instrument having heard it once. But Bob was also 'Special' and when he went to school he rode the short school bus.

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