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August 4, 2011

'Mental Abacus': An Unusual Calculating Ability

Stanford University, Stanford University


Stanford Univ.

The Mental Calculation World Cup is a brutal contest, and one that threatens to fry the neurons of the unprepared. Over the course of a competition, contestants might be asked to add a string of 10 different 10-digit numbers, multiply 18,467,941 by 73,465,135, find the square root of 530,179 and determine which day of the week corresponds to Aug. 12, 1721 – all without writing anything down.

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TAGGED: thinking, mathematics

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