I decided to read up on Wim Klein. Klein worked as a physicist at CERN from 1958- 1976. He is considered to be one of the world's first human calculators. He worked at CERN at a time when there weren't many computers and because of this the scientists there greatly appreciated his ability to calculate calculations that may have taken much longer to complete without his help. Even the computers back then couldn't keep up with his calculations. When the computer eventually did become much smarter and faster it became Klein's job to make the equations inserted into the computer much simpler for it to read. He was an inspiration to future human calculators and will always be remembered as one of the best.

I calculate things really fast sometimes like this, but I don't think I could multiply three or four two digit numbers together in my head! Sometimes when my family and I are playing a bored game together and we have finished the game and are tallying scores I already know who won. It takes time for each person to individually add up their own score, but for me it's simple. My dad tells me to be quiet sometimes as I blurt out the scores and winner of each game we play. Maybe someday I will be able to multiply numbers like Klein.... but not today!

Source:
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/december-2012/%E2%80%98human-calculator%E2%80%99-wim-klein-advanced-physics-inspired-others

Beauty and Geometry

Haha! That interview was quite short! It's obvious to me that Zhang was never in any of this for the fame or fortune he would receive by solving this problem, but instead he was in it for the pure joy of simply knowing the answer. I don't know if anybody else is like this, but when I get the right answer on a test question that I worked so hard to find the answer to... it's such a great feeling. That's the same way I think Zhang felt. He didn't want to become famous, he didn't want to be interviewed, he simply was in it for his great love of math.

Math is a beautiful thing indeed. It's all around us. I don't really think of it that way very often, but it is. In nature, we see patterns in all sorts of plants and perfect shapes and angles everywhere around us. Take the simple example of when you cut an apple down the middle, a perfect little star is formed. Simple, yet beautiful. Everything can be tied back to math!

The math I use in secret isn't exactly in "secret" so to speak. My family often plays board games where you build out your specific little area or section of the game and then calculate all the points at the end. The addition/multiplication just comes so quickly to my head that I end up knowing who has won the game before we actually tally all the points. My dad yells at me to stop telling us the scores before we get the chance to add them up, but I just end up blurting it out, revealing who the winner is.

Time calculations is also a big part of the math I do "secretly". During long cross country runs i will time mile by mile and deduce how far we have gone and how far we have to go. It's not the best habit to get into, but it gives me something to do while I run. I also am constantly making myself timed schedules of the things I will do in a given day, how much free time I will have after them and what I can do to speed things up.

I hope to be able to figure these sorts of things faster and faster as the years go by!

Grade, commonly referred to as slope, is simply rise/run. In order to find %grade we can use the equation 100(rise/run) and that would give us how much we fall or rise over a certain distance. For example, if you had a 10% grade that means that you would rise or fall 10ft for every 100ft of distance ran. The equation can also be expressed as tan a= triangle h/d

We can now see why handling a 9% grade may be cumbersome, but a 100% grade is just plain "suicidal" because taking into my example above, if we had an 100% grade that would mean rising 10ft for every 10ft! If I am out biking or jogging I want a 0% grade from now on because that's just plain flat ground. 

Quick story on how this concept may have helped my family in the past. One camping trip we decide it would be nice to go up into the peaceful mountains of Colorado and wanted a new campsite for a change instead of the one we always went to called "Redondo". So instead of taking a turn at the Redondo campsite we tried a new one called "Iron Gate". Now, the road to the campsite may have been perfectly fine for any old car carrying some light tents, but we were pulling a full size pop up camper! There were no %grade signs anywhere in sight and had we have seen them I think we would have thought differently before journeying up that hill. For the first 15 mins or so our Bronco handled itself just fine, but then the hill started to get steeper and steeper. We had no choice now but to continue on, we had already made it this far. Bad choice. The next 45 mins were filled with cursing, stopped cars and screeching tires, as we slowly made our way up the hill. We made it to the top with smoking brakes and exhausted campers. I don't think we will ever camp up there again and from now on I'll try to see if there is a %grade sign on the road BEFORE we spend an hour trying to get up it.

Response to Math Illiteracy

The reason that Americans aren't so math savvy, has been said over and over again in the comments above. It's because of the technology and resources we have at our fingertips today. As soon as we encounter a problem that actually makes us think we resort to looking for some calculator program that will solve it for us or some iphone app that give us a short cut. We are so lazy and our lives are so busy that we can't stop and think about what 7*8 is, we just type it into our phones and out pops the answer. 

I can't say that all of us aren't mathematically savvy though because some Americans have to work with numbers every day. They were probably thinking that inventing these apps and gadgets would help them be able to crunch the bigger numbers much faster and lead to more breakthroughs in the math world. They don't have time for all the simple stuff and needed a way to work past it. They weren't trying to give everybody else a way out of learning, they were simply working on such advanced theories that they needed those tools. 

Sadly, this technology will only continue to "aid" us in our everyday lives until only the machines are doing all of the work, not us.

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