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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Smart & Stupid

posted by on December 11 at 12:55 PM

Exhibit A: Mathlete Breaks Own Record:

The world’s fastest human calculator on Tuesday broke his own record for working out a 200-digit number using nothing but brain power to produce the answer in just over 70 seconds.

Alexis Lemaire, a 27-year-old Frenchman, correctly calculated the 13th root of a random 200-digit number from a possible 393 trillion answers.

The so-called ‘mathlete’ produced the answer of 2,407,899,893,032,210 in 70.2 seconds, beating his previous record of 72.4 seconds, at London’s Science Museum.

A computer was used to produce a random 200-digit number before he sat down to calculate the answer in his head.

The museum’s curator of mathematics, Jane Wess, said: “He sat down and it was all very quiet — and all of a sudden he amazingly just cracked it.

“I believe that it is the highest sum calculated mentally.”

Exhibit B: John Singleton to direct movie version of The A-Team.

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1

I agree. With calculators readily available, doing math in your head is stupid.

Posted by povertyrich | December 11, 2007 1:18 PM
2

Godel Escher Baracus.

Posted by Jeremy Richards | December 11, 2007 2:44 PM

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