The holy grail of memory is considered to be eidetic memory, what is more commonly as known as a photographic memory.

Currently, there's plenty of skepticism about it. That's largely because there's so little scientific study about it, coupled with the rarity of finding anyone who truly has it. Fortunately, that's all starting to change.

If you've spent more than 5 minutes reading Grey Matters, you realize that there are many clever ways to simulate a great memory, and even to use a trained memory to appear to be far better than the true credit it deserves.

We'll start with a 2010 National Geographic story about Gianni Golfera. He's being studied by researchers because of his extraordinary memory abilities. However, he has also learned, created, and taught memory systems that anyone can use, so there's a question of just how much of his memory is due to biology and how much is due to practice and determination.



More recently, it's been discovered that there is a specific type of enhanced memory, called “hyperthymestic syndrome”, or less technically, “superior autobiographical memory”, that may be at the heart of this unusual phenomena. I mentioned this briefly back in 2008 on my post about Jill Price.

In that same post, I also mentioned that Taxi star Marilu Henner is also hyperthymestic. Late last year, she appeared in a 60 Minutes report about superior autobiographical memory with some others with the same condition.

This is worth watching, because it's a more detailed account of the condition, the people who have it, and the state of the current research about this little-understood phenomenon:

Along with the main report, CBS also posted two short bonus footage segments. In the first, Lesley Stahl puts Louise Owen's memory to the test, and in the second, Marilu Henner compares the experience of having such a remarkable memory to time traveling.

As someone interested in memory, even though my own interest is largely in entertainment, I do believe this research could prove to be quite interesting. If you have any thoughts or experiences you'd like to share about this unique form of memory, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

It's time for April snippets!

• I've talked about memorizing poetry and also talked about memorizing the elements. Now you can use the two concepts to reinforce each other, using the Poetic Table of the Elements! Simply click on any element's symbol or number on the chart (or the element name along the left side), and you'll be taken to poem by everyone from classic poets to original poems submitted by readers. This is a great way to make both learning poetry and the elements fun!

• Remembering long works like poetry is one thing, and presenting it is quite another. FInancial Times gives us a behind-the-scenes look at Malcom Gladwell's secrets for successful presentation (Gladwell's work inspired the book Made To Stick). You also might enjoy this look at Steve Jobs' presentation secrets.

• Back in 2008, I covered some good memory-related articles from Google Books here and here. I've found a few more since then:

They are Idiot Savants. Wizards of the Calendar: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Man with a Photographic Memory: Part 1

Improve Your Memory: Part 1

Electric Teacher Helps Memorize: Part 1

Tricks to Keep Under Your Hat: Part 1

Reading With Your Fingertips: Part 1

• In Calculators: Past, Present and Future, I took a look at the different device people have used to calculate. There's an even more detailed look at past calculation devices over at RetroCalculators.com. I especially like Mr. Smart The Educated Monkey Calculator!

• We'll wind up with this look at Mental Floss readers' favorite mnemonics. Most of them are in the comments. Mnemonics for biological classification seem to be unusually popular.

I came back from my vacation, only to discover some sad news. Kim Peek, the savant who inspired the hit movie Rain Man, has died of a heart attack on December 19, 2009.

Kim Peek's savant condition allows him to remember everything he has ever read. In the following clip, Kim shows off this powerful ability at the first (and unfortunately only) meeting of the Athanasius Kircher Society.

Even more amazing than Kim's ability to remember everything he's ever read, is his approach to reading itself. Whenever he read, his left eyes reads the left page while his right eye reads the right page. There is more to his life, of course, than just his abilities. The documentary below, Kim Peek: The Real Rain Man, gives a more complete picture of his life. It's 46 minutes long, but it's well worth watching to better understand this very special individual.


Rest in peace, Kim. You will be missed.

Certainly, you can learn enough feats from this site and its links to present yourself as a genius. Just how are geniuses presented, anyway? I thought it might be fun to look back at how TV has presented their genius characters.

To help you understand these types, many of the links below have links to one or more free full online episodes of their respective shows, which I've marked with (fe) next to their names.

* Professor: This is the classic genius caricature. Whenever the Professor is faced with a problem, his intellect is able to devise an ingenious way to solve the problem. Note that the Professor type is usually portrayed with minor emotional qualities, and is a neutral character who often helps settle disputes. As long the other characters around them understand these quirks, they get along fine with others.This category is named after the Professor from Gilligan's Island (fe), but would also include Star Trek's Mr. Spock, CSI's Gil Grissom (fe), Charlie Eppes of Numb3rs (fe), and MacGyver.

* TV Genius: The TV Genius would be the Professor type taken to extremes. Instead of simply having minor emotional qualities, they are presented as the quiet, maladjusted type. Interacting with other people is very difficult to them, even to the point of being baffling, but dealing with numerous analytical details is simple and fascinating for them, as if they were borderline autistic. They're often impossibly smart to the point that they can handle all branches of science with equal brilliance. Austin James in Probe (fe), Back To The Future's Doc Brown, and most of the cast of Frasier would fit here.

* Teen Genius: Unlike the previous types who tend to have some difficulties in dealing with people, the Teen Genius has fewer odd quirks, except for the natural problems that come with being a teenager. While Doogie Howser, M.D. (fe) is probably the first example to come to mind, there is also the four main characters of Whiz Kids (fe), Growing Pains' Carol Seaver (fe), and Willow on Buffy, The Vampire Slayer (fe).

* Insufferable Genius: This type frequently boasts of their amazing knowledge, and seems to come across as a know-it-all at first. Then, the other characters learn that this character really is as good as he says, but usually continue to regret the boasting. Many of you are probably already thinking of House (fe), but M*A*S*H's Winchester and Hercule Poirot are also classic examples of this.

* Genius Ditz: Reconciling opposites often makes for interesting characters, and applying that to geniuses gives us the Genius Ditz. These are often characters who have been originally presented as not being too bright, but are actually brilliant in one particular field. Deep Space Nine's Rom had a great talent for engineering. This type of genius is often used in kid's shows, such as the Electric Company's Fargo North, Decoder (fe).

* Genius Bruiser: The Genius Bruiser is another attempt to get away from the standard genius stereotype. When first introduced, they're thought of as a bully or a muscular brute. Later, it's discovered that they also have a brainy side, usually manifesting as some specialized geeky ability or interest. The X-Men's Dr. Henry "Beast" McCoy, and, surprisingly, B.A. Baracus of the A-Team (fe), who was occasionally shown repairing and developing electronic gadgets, are classic examples.

These, of course, aren't the only ways geniuses are portrayed on TV, only the most frequently used. Thankfully, newer approaches are being developed, too. For example, Psych (fe), features a character, Shawn Spencer, who is skilled at observation and deduction, but the police originally think this knowledge is so good, he must've been part of the crime. To keep from being prosecuted, Shawn has to keep up a facade of being psychic.

One of the best shows on TV for comparing approaches to smart characters would have to be Head of the Class (fe). This show focuses on a group of advanced placement New York high school students, and their teacher's unusual approach to education. With so many smart characters in one place, it's often interesting to see how they made the characters so different from each other, as well as the kind of challenges they faced.

Do you have any favorite geniuses from TV? I'd love to hear who it is and what you liked about their approach in the comments!

Ever seen a 200 digit number? For those who haven't, here's one:

85,877,066,894,718,045,602,549,144,850,158,599,202,771,247,748,960,878,023,151,390,314,284,284,465,842,798,373,290,242,826,571,823,153,045,030,300,932,591,615,405,929,429,773,640,895,967,991,430,381,763,526,613,357,308,674,592,650,724,521,841,103,664,923,661,204,223

Imagine being given that number and then being asked to find a number that, when multiplied by itself 13 times, will give that number as an answer (in other words, the 13th root). Oh, and you have less than 90 seconds!

That was the task set for Alexis Lemaire on July 24th of this year, and he did it in only 77.99 seconds at Oxford's Museum of the History of Science!

Back in 2004, Lemaire also set a record for finding the 13th root of a 100-digit number in only 3.62 seconds!

How does someone even begin to calculate a 13th root? The best way is to work up to the task slowly. The best place to start is to learn how to do cube roots. This gives you an idea of some of the processes and abilities needed to perform mental root calculations.

From there, you can work up to fifth roots, and then to square roots. Yes, it is strange that square roots are trickier to mentally calculate than 3rd or 5th roots, but that is indeed the case.

Once you're familiar with those, you can start working on 13th roots themselves. A knowledge and understanding of logarithms will be of great help here.

In case you've been wondering, I'll wrap up by ending the suspense. The 13th root of the aforementioned 200-digit number is 2396232838850303.

A “lightning calculator”, for those not familiar with the term, is simply someone who can perform seemingly complex math in their head very quickly. They're also often called “Human Calculators”. To get a better idea of what a lightning calculator is, you can watch people such as Badri Narayanan, Scott Flansburg, Ruediger Gamm, Daniel Tammet (The full documentary is also available), Arthur Benjamin and Mike Byster.

While you can see current masters of the art on video, you can also learn about lightning calculators of the past, as well. One such past master was Alexander Aitken (pictured above), who is regarded among the best of them.

Part of the original lure of this type of act, as a form of entertainment, spoke to human potential. It demonstrated that the human brain was capable of amazingly complex tasks, and even suggested that the brain had limitless potential. Much like super memory acts, they changed their audience's ideas about what was possible (at least when presented well).

Lightning calculators usually fell into one of two camps. First, there were the savants, many of whom had a natural ability with numbers.

The other group were people who had learned and practiced feats of mental math. If you would like to try your hand at such feats, there are numerous resources available. Among my favorites are the Mental Gym, Arthur Benjamin's videos, BEATCALC, MathPath, the Lightning Calcuator book and Mike Byster's Math Shortcuts. With this kind of help, you may be able to perform as a lightning calculator yourself.

As an entertainment, it used to be a vastly more popular form of entertainment than it is now. Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, they theorize the pocket calculator was the largely responsible. However, the current issue of Plus Magazine (issue 41, at this writing) delves deeper in the issue of the death of the lightning calculator.

I would like to suggest that writing about the death of lightning calculators is premature. First, with the right presentation, a human calculator act could be more impressive today than ever. Performed as a man vs. machine challenge, especially with today's fast computers, this could be a big hit.

Even though, as the Plus article suggests, there is a politically correct argument against savants using their skills in this way, this isn't always the case. Not all savants are helpless, disabled people. Kim Peek tours schools, and inspired the movie Rain Man, while Daniel Tammet runs his own company. If a savant were to decide to do such an act out of his or her own free will, I don't think it should be considered exploitation.

I hope you've enjoyed this look into the little-explored world of lightning calculators.

Those of you who have read this blog for some time, know of my passion for magic squares. I've even shared several unusual magic squares, such as Werner Miller's Square Bet or the nested magic squares, from time to time.

I've recently discovered the work of George Widener, an artist who was born mildly autistic. His site features many amazing works, but I'd like to direct your attention to his calendar work. Some are simply calendars of future dates, such as New Year's Eve Bash and Birthday in 2099. The rest have more amazing and whimsical touches, however. There's Month of Sundays, which is based on the classic expression, and features dates from the 23rd century that fall on a Sunday. Similarly, TGIF spans 1500 years of Fridays.

Especially interesting though, are the mixture of calendars and magic squares. Portrait of Sarah features four birthdays of George's family members in the center of a magic square. The center four squares of the Queen Victoria magic square feature important dates from her life.

The single most astounding square, and the one featured in the upper left corner of this post, would have to be 9717TGIF. If you total the large numbers, they total 66 in every direction. If you total the years, they total 9717 in every direction. If you assign numbers to each month, with January being 1, through December, which would be 12, the months total 30 in every direction. If you're still not impressed, although I can't imagine that's the case, every date in the square falls on a Friday!

Another impressive magic square which I'd like to highlight is Lee Sallow's magic square, from the bottom of this magic square column. It's a deceptively simple 3x3 magic square that totals 45 in every direction. Going one step further, though, you can write out the numbers as English words, and the number of letters in every direction will total 21!

Unrelated note: This is the 200th Grey Matters post!