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‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died

thehindu.com

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Re: ‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died

#21

Post by losethos »

Who's Your favorite king, God?

God says...

salvation.

13:6 I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.

14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

14:2 The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God.

14:3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

14:4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the LORD.

----

Mutiny on the Bounty

----

God, does Hawkings impress You more? Who?

God says...

not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.

2:16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; 2:17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: 2:18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: 2:19 And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: 2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come: 2:21 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Re: ‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died

#22

Post by edlinfan »

scoot wrote: post #13
wging wrote: post #6

>Rated as one in 58 million for her stupendous mathematical feats by one of the fastest super-computers ever invented —the Univac — 1108 —, Ms. Devi believed in using grey cells to silicon chips. This is somewhat unclear. Wikipedia clears up what's probably meant here: >In 1977 in Dallas she competed with a computer to see who give the cube root of 188138517 faster. She won. At an American university she was asked to…

Did she ever document her mental process for these sorts of feats? I mean, I doubt I could come up with the correct answer given an unlimited time, a ream of paper, and a pocket calculator, so I'm fascinated how she did. Was she very good at complex math, or did she leverage a huge working memory to split the problem up into a larger number of simpler calculations, or some other combination of factors?

I don't know how much Devi has revealed about the superhuman feats mentioned in the article, but she did write a book on how to do basic math very quickly. It's a good read.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Joy_of_Numbers_the.html?...

Re: ‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died

#26

Post by gcanyon »

Calculating 23rd roots is a different story, but finding the day of the week for any date isn't actually that hard. John Conway came up with a manageable method, which was improved a few years back. I think I've simplified it a bit further: http://gcanyon.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/a-better-way-to-calc...

Re: ‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died

#27

Post by mohaps »

arocks wrote: post #19
shared4you wrote: post #4

I feel that she was a child-genius like Ramanujan, but was unfortunate to be not "discovered" by a mentor like G.H.Hardy. She had great memorization skills and logical thinking, so obviously excelled at writing puzzles' books. It's a pity that her contributions to modern mathematics is zilch. I still wonder why didn't she take up number theory. She went into astrology (yea, not astronomy), which is still debated as a…

Indian Astrology is quite a lucrative field. Almost every other person in India believes in it, including wealthy businessmen who are interested in everything from calculating the right time to start a new venture to the most numerologically lucky name for themselves. On the other hand, most mathematicians end up as school teacher in India, especially if you are only good at arithmetic (which I believe was the case,…

You should look up the tragic case of the Indian mathematician V.N. Singh to get some perspective :( http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-04-19/patna... Shakuntala Devi had amazing calculation prowess, but to me it was always seemed more in the savant zone.

Re: ‘Human computer’ Shakuntala Devi has died

#28

Post by virtualwhys »

plus9z wrote: post #15
virtualwhys wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the 23rd root problem is just unfathomable: straight up channeling the over mind. What is that number, I mean really what on earth is that string of digits called, in human terms?

It has 201 digits (it's on the order of 10^200), so it would be about 9.167 googol googol. Yeah, that's incomprehensible. Not the biggest integer I can think of (see Graham's Number) but I'd say it's big enough.

There was a post on HN a few days ago that illustrated U.S. government spending; namely, what does 1 trillion dollars look like.

Apparently 1 trillion dollars is a veritable warehouse of pallets of stacked bills.

Take the 201 digit number; what does that look like as dollar bills laid side-by-side? i.e. how much surface area of the earth could be covered? (if not the whole thing and parts of this galaxy and beyond ;-)).

Just trying to visualize the number to scale.

p.s. reminds me a bit of the Buddha's enlightenment analogies vis-a-vis: take all the grains of sand in the river Ganges; if each grain of sand was a world, and you were to take each grain of sand in each world, even then you would not approach [the scale] of enlightenment -- a 201 digit number is finite, but still, well and truly incomprehensible ;-)

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