In the book "Extraordinary People: Understanding Savant Syndrome"
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/059509239X/105-4371715-5368718)
there is a discussion of lightning calculators and other mathematical
savants.
In particular, mention was made of two projects, one where the rules for
lightning calculations of a variety of types were discovered, and
another (possibly a continuation of the first) where grad students spent
several weeks learning the rules and were able to replicate most types
of mathematical calculation savant behavior. I don't recall if specific
cites to the research were given in the bibliography.
If I had kids, I'd be tempted to dig deeper. :-)
_SRC
Matt Jensen wrote:
> ...
> BTW, I was looking for another reference on this topic, and stumbled on a
> report about "anzan", an ancient Japanese technique for impressive mental
> calculations. Schoolchildren practice it, and then compete in events.
-- ======================================================================== Strata Rose Chalup [KF6NBZ] strata "@" virtual.net VirtualNet Consulting http://www.virtual.net/ ** Project Management & Architecture for ISP/ASP Systems Integration ** =========================================================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:17:48 PDT