Monday, April 30, 2012

Blog Response to Arthur Benjamin does "Mathemagic"


Blog Response to Arthur Benjamin does "Mathemagic"
                In Arthur Benjamin’s presentation at TED he decided to show off a very unique talent of his. His talent was being able to do amazing calculations in his head, calculations that would normally require us to use a calculator. These calculations ranged from squaring 2 digit numbers to squaring 5 digit numbers in his head (note that squaring a 5 digit number requires a 10 digit calculator). Not only were these calculations amazing but his method of doing them was amazing. He said the steps he was doing out loud in his head at one time and instead of just remembering numbers he converted the numbers into words which he would later convert into numbers. During his calculations words such as cookie could be heard as he thought aloud. Arthur Benjamin’s talent is definitely one of a kind and amazing.




 
                Not only was his talent amazing, his presentation style was great. He got the audience very involved and he even pulled some of them up on stage and had them do the calculations he was doing on calculators to prove the validity of his answers. He also made the audience laugh,a lot. He told jokes throughout the presentation that didn’t get the audience off topic, but just made it easier for them to understand and connect to his insane calculations.




                I really enjoyed this presentation because I love the idea of being able to solve things in your head and use symbols such as he did with cookie to represent more complex ideas. I may not be able to square 5 digit numbers in my head such as he did but I love to figure out word puzzles and other things. Arthur Benjamin really stunned me with his performance and it defiantly was put correctly under the jaw dropping category.

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