French Mathlete solves the 13th root of a 200 digit number in 72.4 seconds in his head!
Posted On Thursday, November 15, 2007 at at 1:24 PM by Eddie
"Is the answer 2,397,207,667,966,701?" Said the French mathlete Alexis Lemaire after about a minute of pondering. Yes, that is the answer. This 27-year-old student of artificial intelligence from Reims, France, who don't consider himself a nerd, managed to solve the 13th root of random 200 digit number generated by a computer that took up 17 lines on the screen all in his head.
2 quadrillion, 397 trillion, 207 billion, 667 million, 966 thousand, and 701 is the 13th root. I don't know about you, but I would have lost count at a million.
"The first digit is very easy, the last digit is very easy, but the inside numbers are extremely difficult," Lemaire commented. Apparently, he has been doing the 13th root question for quite a while now, each time eroding his records. "I use an artificial intelligence system which I use on my own brain instead of on a computer," he explained, "Personally, I believe most people can do it but I have also a high-speed mind. My brain works sometimes very, very fast. Sometimes when I do multiplication my brain works so fast that I need to take medication."
Lemaire says he first realized he had a knack for numbers when he was around 11 years old, but surprisingly he did not do well in maths at school. Instead, he was self-taught. His secret method of staying sharp is to not drink coffee or alcohol, avoid food of high fat or concentration, and have daily exercise and math practice.
"I use a process to improve my skills, to behave like a computer. When I do something wrong, I learn from that," he says. "It's like running a program in my head ... to control my brain," He said, "It is important not to work too much - I can't do multiplication all day because otherwise my heart or my brain would fail. Too much training, thinking too fast could be bad for my health."
He is nick-named the "human calculator" - he himself would rather be called the "human computer." After finding out about him, he does seem like an android to me. Although he has yet to finish school, he was already called on by banks and computer science companies eager to throw buckets of money at him.
"Many people at the banks think my gift can be very useful," he says.
Update: If you would like to learn or challenge the new record for 13th roots, visit www.13throot.com
That's just cool. I wish I could do something like that.