Autistic Savants - Their incredible talents

[drzeus99]

Now, I've always been fascinated with anything or anyone that has talents that are mind boggling and fascinating.

I'm really fascinated by a guy called Daniel Tammet, a 30 year old Brit who has been on a couple of shows dealing with savants like himself and Kim Peek, who is probably the most famous of these savants and the inspiration for the main character in the Dustin Hoffman/Tom Cruise picture, "Rainman".

One show focusing on Daniel, called Brainman, has been run numerous times in the US on the Discovery Channel, Science Channel, National Geographic,
as well as on the BBC. Most people here, generally being of higher intellect and interested in scientific matters, have probably seen him before, or have heard of him.

Now, what really boggles my mind is that, as far as my understanding goes, the human brain brain can only state (by recalling) facts if those facts were somehow input into the brain (by reading, seeing, hearing, etc). And by facts, I mean specific names, places, dates. Things that are impossible to calculate without certain data.

For example, no matter how smart one is, it's impossible for someone to tell you the name of the person that lived at 10 Main St, Anytown, USA during the weeks of Dec7-14 1822 unless that information is already stored away in the brain, through whatever means. Without it, stating that info would be impossible. (And I mean tell you this info straight from their memory/minds)

Now, on one of these shows, they show a guy who could tell you the exact weather (I guess in his local town) on ANY date in the past century (or so).
Tell him, Sept 12, 1901..He'll say it was sunny with a high of 72 !!
Without blinking an eye or even thinking about it!!

And that info checks out. He wasn't alive on that date, and didn't read the weather forecast for that town for every one of these dates.

This just blows my mind. No data in..but correct data out. It just defies all known laws of physics, logic, and common sense.

Same with Mr Tammet. Tell him any number and within seconds he knows whether or not it's a prime number. No calculating..he just KNOWS it.

He even learned to speak fluent Finnish in 7 days, without ever having studied it before. It's one of the hardest languages to learn, and experts were baffled by his ability to do this. He can divide 4, 5, 6 digit numbers by numbers of equal
length, and be exactly right, down to more than 20, 30...decimals. Maybe even 100.

Other savants can tell you the day of the week any calander date falls on.
Tell them May 3, 1821 and without hesitation or thinking, they correctly
say "That was a Thursday" (Just an example..don't check that date).

HOW??? HOW???

Again, there's no evidence that this person or persons actually looked at every calendar month, memorizing what day of the week each day falls on,
for the past few hundred years. This info...the correct answer...was never
data that was input into the brain for it to search through.

So far, I've tried to read as much information I can find on this online, but no one seems to have any reasonable or logical explanation. And what really shocked me is that I can't even find articles from people stating the bewilderment that I have, and how it seems to be physically impossible to do,
even though it's happening. This should be front page news around the world.
Brain figures out answer without having the answer data ever input into it.

This is almost like someone being able to just matter of factly KNOW the birthdate of anyone they meet, and just telling them: "you were born on July 7, 1961." It just blows my mind, and should be doing so to the entire scientific community. It could change or rewrite our basic understanding of many scientific areas.

What do you all think? Comments...thoughts?

[Stray Cat]

I think data has been input.

The guy who can tell you what the weather was like on any given day, must have looked at the weather reports. It doesn't make it any less amazing that he has somehow memorized them, but if you're hinting that he just 'knew' instinctively, then you're promoting the paranormal.

The dates thing is much easier, you wouldn't have to have memorised every date down to the day, you can work out using maths what day a particular date fell on.

We already know from studies that maths/calculation and memory are where Savants have amazing abilities so as truly amazing as it really is, it's nothing paranormal, just the normal mechanism working like lightning speed.

That's my thoughts anyway - I may be wrong... and if I am, this is the place where people will point it out :)

[Olowkow]

http://politicalgraveyard.com/chrono/1821/05-03.html
You must be a savant.

[Dr. Trintignant]

Same with Mr Tammet. Tell him any number and within seconds he knows whether or not it's a prime number. No calculating..he just KNOWS it.

Mr Tammet is calculating it, even if he doesn't know it.

How do you catch a ball? Almost any human can do it easily and instinctually, but think about what it requires: your vision system has to estimate the velocity of the ball given its change in position over time and the amount of parallax between your two eyes; you have to compute the parabolic arc of the ball with corrections due to wind resistance; and so on. There is a tremendous amount of computation going on, but you don't realize it.

Autistic savants do the same thing, but with problems that most of us can't do. It's impressive but there's certainly nothing magic going on. The brain is a very powerful computer and can obviously do impressive things when wired up in the "right" (or "wrong") way.

- Dr. Trintignant

PS: As Stray_Cat mentioned, the weather reports and so on were memorized. Now, if he can predict the weather in the future with perfect accuracy, I'll be more impressed :).

[Olowkow]

Mr Tammet is calculating it, even if he doesn't know it.


I would be more inclined to think he has memorized prime numbers up to a certain point.

[Doghouse Reilly]

I recommend reading Daniel Tammet's book, "Embracing The Wide Sky." In it, he discusses all of these topics and lays out his theories as to what is going on in his mind when he calculates primes and learns languages.
Interesting to note, he admits that his ability to determine prime numbers is NOT flawless...sometimes his "feeling" that a number is prime is mistaken.
It's not the case that he has memorized primes.
Anyone interested in savants should read this book. Tammet is very articulate and insightful as to the nature of his gifts.

[Doghouse Reilly]

As to the guy who can tell you the weather, it's obvious that he has at some point perused the weather reports for the last century. It's not possible to determine this information by intuition or secret mental abilities.

[Doghouse Reilly]

So far, I've tried to read as much information I can find on this online, but no one seems to have any reasonable or logical explanation. And what really shocked me is that I can't even find articles from people stating the bewilderment that I have, and how it seems to be physically impossible to do,
even though it's happening. This should be front page news around the world.
Brain figures out answer without having the answer data ever input into it.

What do you all think? Comments...thoughts?

I know I already said this, but it bears repeating: Read Tammet's book. I'm surprised that you didn't stumble upon references to it online, if you were trying to find the information ;) He talks about all of these issues. I think you'll find it extremely insightful, and it will go a long way towards assuaging some of your intense and admirable curiosity.

[drzeus99]

I would be more inclined to think he has memorized prime numbers up to a certain point.

Well, there's over 1,250 prime numbers just up to the number 9999

He has no problem knowing if any 4 digit number is prime or not. I find it hard to believe he's memorized them all as some parlor trick. And there's no known way of quickly using an equation in your mind to figure out if a 4 digit number is prime or not, and always be correct within seconds.

And some people CAN do incredible mathematical calculations in their mind, (like people using an abacus but without the actual abacus to do the actual calculations). But those people have practiced for years, thousands of hours.
There's no indication that any of this has ever happened with Daniel in particular. Otherwise, he'd just be a math wiz..but there's much more to it.

The scientists who have studied and tested him are still lacking an explanation for his abilities.

[drzeus99]

I know I already said this, but it bears repeating: Read Tammet's book. I'm surprised that you didn't stumble upon references to it online, if you were trying to find the information ;) He talks about all of these issues. I think you'll find it extremely insightful, and it will go a long way towards assuaging some of your intense and admirable curiosity.

I have read *some* of his book. A friend had it, I borrowed it, but said person was leaving (on vacation from overseas), so I only read a portion.

The amazing thing is the synesthesia type effect he gets with numbers. Like you said earlier, he ISN'T memorizing primes. The way he explains, the shapes/colors of the numbers just APPEAR (when doing a calculation), and prime numbers just *look/feel* a certain way to his mind's eye. He describes prime numbers as being different from non prime ones. And yes, it's not 100% perfect, but pretty damn close. And for something that he's not thinking about (as far as doing a calculation to determine if it's prime or not) or using memorization techniques, it's absolutely amazing at HOW he's able to tell..by that texture/feel/look of the number. Now that's incredible.

[Olowkow]

I recommend reading Daniel Tammet's book, "Embracing The Wide Sky." In it, he discusses all of these topics and lays out his theories as to what is going on in his mind when he calculates primes and learns languages.
Interesting to note, he admits that his ability to determine prime numbers is NOT flawless...sometimes his "feeling" that a number is prime is mistaken.
It's not the case that he has memorized primes.
Anyone interested in savants should read this book. Tammet is very articulate and insightful as to the nature of his gifts.

Since we don't have the book here, could you summarize perhaps what his method is, if not memorization or calculation? You mention his "feeling", what does that mean in this regard?

ETA: Just saw zeus' comments.
And for something that he's not thinking about (as far as doing a calculation to determine if it's prime or not) or using memorization techniques, it's absolutely amazing at HOW he's able to tell..by that texture/feel/look of the number. Now that's incredible.
It certainly is incredible, but must have an explanation. "Texture/feel/look" of the number just is meaningless though. He is telling us simply that he does not know how he does it. So it is not impossible that he has memorized a list of primes.

[drzeus99]

As to the guy who can tell you the weather, it's obvious that he has at some point perused the weather reports for the last century. It's not possible to determine this information by intuition or secret mental abilities.

So one would think, no? That seems like the logical answer.

Problem is, it all happened almost overnight, after being struck in the head with a ball during a neighborhood baseball game as a child. It came from nowhere, this ability. His parents would ask him to say what the weather was,
50 years ago, on a certain date, and sure enough, he always answered right.
And that happened just days and weeks after that event.

Again, if it were just someone who had a great memory and memorized this stuff, it would be a fun trick, but it's more than that. He has also been seen by doctors and scients who diagnosed that he became a savant (or had savant like traits) only after the incident with ball to head and his strange feat of weather telling began. And it's not like the kid sat home for a week after the event trying to memorize the weather for every single day and making a nobby of it. Not the case at all. If it was that simple, he mearly be a guy with great memory....cool, but nothing that's confounded doctors and scientists.

Now mind you, I'm 100% skeptic to the core, and don't believe in ANYTHING supernatural. I'm pure scientifically, rationally, and logically minded.

I'm sure there's *some* explanation, but so far, it seems to be eluding the experts. That's one reason that Daniel Tammet is such a rare find. Most people with this high degree/level of being an autistic savant, sadly have other mental/psychological conditions that prevent them from being able to intelligently express the processes that go on in their minds when these incredible things occur. He's a once in a lifetime find for the scientific community, and hopefully he'll be able to be a big help in learning more about this condition.

[drzeus99]

It certainly is incredible, but must have an explanation. "Texture/feel/look" of the number just is meaningless though. He is telling us simply that he does not know how he does it. So it is not impossible that he has memorized a list of primes.

To us..yes..it's meaningless. To someone who experiences synesthesia, it isn't meaningless. Colors can have a taste. Sounds can have a color to them. It's a fascinating field of science that is still fairly new and just being studied in detail, using the latest technology and best info that's available to modern science today.

[Olowkow]

Synesthesia is one thing, but prime numbers are a little different. I guess I need to read more about the "scientific" research done on the subject. Generally, when something sounds impossible, something has been over stated.

[Earthborn]

Calculating the day of the week isn't that impressive. There are several methods that anyone can learn. Some of them (http://pubcrawler.org/2006/11/02/mentally-calculate-the-day-of-the-week-for-a-date/) rely on mental arithmetic, while others (http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html) rely more on memorisation of some basic patterns. The Gregorian Calendar is quite regular, so this should not be surprising. Why people always present this as some amazing ability, I don't know. The only reason I can't do it is because I am too lazy to learn to do it.

Getting the weather on a particular day right is probably harder, because the weather doesn't have any mathematical regularities. Even so, there are some regularities that make as broad patterns that are easier to remember than unconnected facts for each day. If you live in Europe, you can probably be sure it won't snow in June, and that it won't be 30 Celsius in December. Usually there is similar weather more than one day at a time, so a less memory intensive way to remember the weather is by remembering the days the weather changed. If you don't know the weather of one particular day it is reasonably safe to guess that it was similar to the weather the day before, or the following day.

Even harder is knowing which numbers are prime and which are not. But even here there are corners to cut. Plenty numbers can be dismissed easily, as anyone can recognise that they can divided by something else. Any even number (except 2) and any number ending in 5 (except 5) can't be prime. And there are other ways to recognise which numbers are probably prime, and which are not. I suspect that whatever methods savants use, they probably don't provide mathematical certainty that a number is prime as that would be computationally very expensive. They probably do get it wrong once in a while, just not very often.

[kerikiwi]

I would confidently say that he definitely calculates, but is not aware of the steps he takes to do so.
I find that young children, moving from materials to mental maths, can arrive at the right answers to various problems not by 'just knowing' --- despite the fact that they often explain it that way--- but by performing calculations mentally but not being conscious of the exact process.

[CelticRose]

In the interest of full disclosure, I may have Asperger's (a mild form of Autism), but have yet to be able to afford an official diagnosis.

This article about Mr. Tammet has some information about how he processes information. Brain Man (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/26/60minutes/main2401846.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody)

Well, there's over 1,250 prime numbers just up to the number 9999

He has no problem knowing if any 4 digit number is prime or not. I find it hard to believe he's memorized them all as some parlor trick. And there's no known way of quickly using an equation in your mind to figure out if a 4 digit number is prime or not, and always be correct within seconds.
Only 1250 prime numbers with four digits or less? I could memorize that and I'm no savant. Granted I have a near-photographic memory, but still, the task doesn't sound that difficult.

I'm not sure where you're getting "no input" from. Tammet himself states that he studies numbers. Of course, he has at least two distinct advantages over the rest of us when it comes to memorizing numbers.

First, there's his synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia). Prime numbers probably just look or feel different to him. I had this when I was a child, and I still retain a few hints of it, although I seem to have outgrown it for the most part. Numbers and letters had distinct personalities; certain foods tasted like colors. When your brain is "wired" differently than most people's, you perceive the world differently.

Second, it's apparent to me from reading the linked article that Mr. Tammet is fascinated by numbers. Someone with autism who is fascinated by a subject will spend inordinate amounts of time studying said subject, even if it's a subject that most people would find boring or trivial. I would imagine that Mr. Tammet knows a great deal about calculations and patterns in numbers.

Which reminds me of another point in his favor. Autistic people are very good at finding patterns in things, even to the point of seeing patterns where none exist.

Of course, true savants are extremely rare, and Mr. Tammet's memorization skills are phenomenal. I don't mean to trivialize his abilities by anything I've said here.

[kerikiwi]

Only 1250 prime numbers with four digits or less? I could memorize that and I'm no savant. Granted I have a near-photographic memory, but still, the task doesn't sound that difficult.



The entire koran is quite commonly (and pointlessly) memorised. That's a more impressive feat than memorising a mere 1250 numbers.

And non-literate cultures also rely heavily on quite prodigious feats
of memory.

[Dr. Trintignant]

Problem is, it all happened almost overnight, after being struck in the head with a ball during a neighborhood baseball game as a child. It came from nowhere, this ability. His parents would ask him to say what the weather was,
50 years ago, on a certain date, and sure enough, he always answered right.
And that happened just days and weeks after that event.

I assume this is the guy:
http://www.orlandoserrell.com/about.htm

There can't be too many people who became savants after being struck in the head with a baseball. The page says:
In addition, he can recall the weather, where he was, and what he was doing for every day since the accident.

Emphasis mine. It says nothing about recalling the weather 50 years before the accident.

This kind of memory is definitely impressive, but that's all it is--memory.

- Dr. Trintignant

[Doghouse Reilly]

I assume this is the guy:
http://www.orlandoserrell.com/about.htm

Emphasis mine. It says nothing about recalling the weather 50 years before the accident.

This kind of memory is definitely impressive, but that's all it is--memory.

- Dr. Trintignant

That's more reasonable. I had a feeling something wasn't communicated properly in the O.P's post. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the program that was on television was purposely ambiguous about the supposed weather powers.

[Tapio]

He even learned to speak fluent Finnish in 7 days, without ever having studied it before. It's one of the hardest languages to learn, and experts were baffled by his ability to do this.

Sorry, but got to nitpick (check out my location :)). Tammet did not learn Finnish, but Icelandic. These are, I think, two of the most beautiful languages in the world with some similarities in the way they sound.

As a sidestep, I've been specializing in teaching autistic and asberger-diagnosed kids, so this thread is a very interesting one indeed. I once taught (and learned a lot from) a 9 year-old boy who had by that age internalized the known 'family tree' of dinosaurs, as well as a startling amount of information regarding astronomy (he wrote and drew a 50-page leaflet named 'The birth of the Universe'), human anatomy, diseases and weapons (:eye-poppi). Very interesting characters, but in many social ways extremely frustrated, fearful, even sad...

Cheers!

[LissaLysikan]

Which reminds me of another point in his favor. Autistic people are very good at finding patterns in things, even to the point of seeing patterns where none exist.


Nitpick. The patterns exist (being one of those autistics that finds patterns in everything), the question is are they of any value. Most patterns, like the patterns I see in dust, are meaningless. Doesn't mean they aren't there, though :).

[lauwersw]

While they indeed have impressive skills, savants generally miss other impressive skills that most other people do have (so I guess that's why don't think about them as impressive). I recall Daniel explaining that he cannot drive a car because he gets lost in all details. He just can't take decisions quick enough based on all the information that comes at you while driving. So that confirms that his brain is just wired differently.

I think that these people are lucky to be born now. We value their information processing skills now, but a few hundred years ago I don't think they had much chance to survive.

[TobiasTheViking]

I think that these people are lucky to be born now. We value their information processing skills now, but a few hundred years ago I don't think they had much chance to survive.

I disagree. a few hundred years ago you would just be working in the field and be quirky.


You actually see this in Amish societies right now. People with autism(depending on degree of course) go unnoticed in the Amish society, because it is easier to cope with. Doesn't mean there are less people with autism in the Amish Society.

[Tapio]

You actually see this in Amish societies right now. People with autism(depending on degree of course) go unnoticed in the Amish society, because it is easier to cope with. Doesn't mean there are less people with autism in the Amish Society.

This is something I have an anecdote of.

My grandmothers mother was the heiress to a large farm way out in the countryside. As kids we used to spend many summers there. As their regular farm-hand they had a fairly deeply autistic man named Jukka. He'd been rescued as a young child by my grandmothers mother from the parents of a large family who'd literally left him to die. Times were hard and they just didn't have the will or means to cope with him.

Anyway, he lived most of his life as a farm-hand. After educating myself more in what we know about autism and becoming the teacher of autistic kids, I realized what an ideal place to grow a farm would be for these kinds of people. The daily structure is pretty much set in stone with very little room for deviation. My grandmothers mother was an iron woman with a will that could break rocks, so anytime Jukka would be going into an autistic 'fit' or getting behind schedule, she'd just guide him through by taking both physical and mental control of the situation. Rest assured, she had no idea of such a thing as 'autism'. It was simply the way things had to be done in the old days, in order for a large farm to function.

Jukka had his own small flat in the main yard with his walls covered in newspaper articles, pages of books and photos of all Finnish presidents to date (whose biographies he knew by heart). When asked, he would sneak a bottle of lemonade for my cousins, brother and me, and take us for wild rides on their huge tractor. All the time twitching and muttering to himself. Every once in a while we'd see him have a 'fit' and witness my grandmothers mother come to him and grab him by his head, telling him to calm down with a voice that would stop a bunch of wild dogs in their tracks. Jukka would find some isolated corner of the farm, sit there for a moment rocking himself, or go for a dip in the river, and then be 'fine' again.

He loved my grandmothers mother dearly and would find refuge even as an old man in her huge lap, humming to Christian tunes. Jukka lived a long life, and unlike many autistic people living quite terrified lives full of conflicts and distress in the cities, was a wonderfully happy man, as stable as a deeply autistic individual can be. All without medication, special rehabilitation or anything like that.

[lauwersw]

Interesting. I would have thought that lack of social skills would make it more difficult than today, but after reading your story I think it might even have been the opposite! I guess there's not much historical data left on such cases to verify that.

[drkitten]

Well, there's over 1,250 prime numbers just up to the number 9999

He has no problem knowing if any 4 digit number is prime or not. I find it hard to believe he's memorized them all as some parlor trick.

Why not? Memorization is what autists do. And it's not even particularly difficult to memorize a list of 1250 numbers.

I knew a guy who would busk at the local pedestrian mall, and one of his schticks was that you could give him any ZIP code in the USA and he'd tell you the city it was associated with. I never saw him fail, even when he was given tiny little 300 person hamlets several time zones away. (97329 : Cascadia OR) That's a lot harder than "merely" memorizing a list of a thousand or so numbers.

[Olowkow]

Speaking a language "fluently" is a very subjective claim. I highly doubt anyone, even a savant or a genius, can learn to speak a language fluently in 7 days. I would need very strong evidence from professional linguists to go for that one.
It is possible to learn phrases and to pronounce them perfectly, yes. That impresses native speakers greatly, but fluency is a totally different matter.

[LissaLysikan]

I don't know how fluent he was, but it was more than memorizing phrases. He was able to converse in the language WITHOUT advance preparation for the questions he would be asked.

[CelticRose]

Nitpick. The patterns exist (being one of those autistics that finds patterns in everything), the question is are they of any value. Most patterns, like the patterns I see in dust, are meaningless. Doesn't mean they aren't there, though :).
Sorry. I was just quoting what I've heard a lot of autistic people themselves say. ;)

[Olowkow]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fg75qRdzwo
Interesting video about Orlando Serrell. I need a good hit on the head! :)

[Tumbleweed]

Okay, what about guys like Mozart? He was a sort of savant, INCREDIBLY talented. Yet here's what he had to say about it
" a young man approached Mozart want him to teach him how to write symphonies. Mozart told him practice practice first, then write some sonatas and eventually with time he might be able to do so. The young man got upset and said, no I want to know how to do them now. YOU didn't have to practice and write sonatas first! Mozart looked at him and said, yes, but I didn't have to ask anybody how to do it.
His symphonies, he said, just came to him in dreams, like the force of creativity had somehow bestowed its crown on him

[LissaLysikan]

Some savants are born that way, some seem to become that way through injury. Knowing how a particular historical person became the way they were would require having documentation of their early years, which is rarely detailed enough. One of the reasons you aren't likely to see a professional say that any of the geniuses of the past was Aspergers or autistic - making that judgment based on a few character traits is plainly silly (although you will see it on many ASD advocacy sites).

[Vic Vega]

I don't know how fluent he was, but it was more than memorizing phrases. He was able to converse in the language WITHOUT advance preparation for the questions he would be asked.

That's right. The people interviewing him (on Icelandic television) were stunned.

Maybe he wasn't "fluent" in some technical sense. I'm sure he didn't know obscure Icelandic words, but he was certainly able to hold a real conversation with the interviewers and answer real questions.

[blutoski]

Some savants are born that way, some seem to become that way through injury. Knowing how a particular historical person became the way they were would require having documentation of their early years, which is rarely detailed enough. One of the reasons you aren't likely to see a professional say that any of the geniuses of the past was Aspergers or autistic - making that judgment based on a few character traits is plainly silly (although you will see it on many ASD advocacy sites).

Yes, plus there is often a very selective characterization of even those few famous cases from history.

Just one example is Mozart, who we know had music instructors for most of his childhood, and grew up in a musically educated family. His father invested most of the family's disposable income in his musical education, notwithstanding that his father was already one of the best music teachers in the nation. He was both gifted *and* musically educated. In later childhood / early adulthood, he apprenticed with established composers and ultimately started writing his own operas and symphonies.

Another popular target is Einstein, who is falsely represented as having autistic characteristics. He was actually very normal socially, although perhaps something of a jerk to some people.

[Skeptical Greg]

So one would think, no? That seems like the logical answer.

Problem is, it all happened almost overnight, after being struck in the head with a ball during a neighborhood baseball game as a child. It came from nowhere, this ability. His parents would ask him to say what the weather was,
50 years ago, on a certain date, and sure enough, he always answered right.
And that happened just days and weeks after that event.
.....................
One has to wonder why it occurred to his parents to test him in this manner ?

" I've got a great idea, what with the recent bump on the head and all .. Lets see if he knows weather data for the last 50 years !.. "


As far as memorizing, they were verifying his answers by some means, and it is reasonable to assume he had access to the same information ...

[Doghouse Reilly]

Why not? Memorization is what autists do. And it's not even particularly difficult to memorize a list of 1250 numbers.

I knew a guy who would busk at the local pedestrian mall, and one of his schticks was that you could give him any ZIP code in the USA and he'd tell you the city it was associated with. I never saw him fail, even when he was given tiny little 300 person hamlets several time zones away. (97329 : Cascadia OR) That's a lot harder than "merely" memorizing a list of a thousand or so numbers.

Ah, the good old Pearl Street zip code man. I even saw him do international zip codes....Germany, England, even Japan.

[drzeus99]

Even harder is knowing which numbers are prime and which are not. But even here there are corners to cut. Plenty numbers can be dismissed easily, as anyone can recognise that they can divided by something else. Any even number (except 2) and any number ending in 5 (except 5) can't be prime. .

True. And I believe that any prime number besides that's 2 digits or more, has to end in either 1,3,7 or 9.
Even with that info, it wouldn't help someone know which of the following 2 numbers were prime: 5843 or 5853. Knowing which is prime in 2-3 seconds,
and accurately picking the correct prime number from similar pairs of 4 digit numbers under proper testing conditions, 10, 20 times in a row, with only a few seconds time needed to respond, is quite extraordinary.

When the person is a known savant with this capability, and is able to explain the process involved because they are fortunate in not having some other neurological conditions (that often are present in others with this condition) which prevent them from doing so, it really aids in helping science gain much needed understanding in attempting to understand and explain what is going on, and hopefully, HOW it goes on.

When Mr Tammet explains that he sees the numbers (individually, or as a set), in his mind's eye, I suppose, as always having a distinct shape and color to them, and then states that the *texture* of numbers that are prime are different than non prime numbers..it bears some looking into.

It's a rare oppurtunity for science to be able to work with a high functioning savant like Mr Tammet, who can tell them exactly what's going on in his mind. It's at least a starting point that shouldn't readily be discounted simply because it sounds "impossible". It certainly bears investigation.

As of now, at least as I'm aware, there's no definitive answer or explanation as to exactly how this is done, or what's going on in his brain. Thankfully, he's made himself completely available for scientific study and research, in hopes of understanding more or even fully explaining what's going on.

[drzeus99]

Sorry, but got to nitpick (check out my location :)). Tammet did not learn Finnish, but Icelandic. These are, I think, two of the most beautiful languages in the world with some similarities in the way they sound.



You're right. I stand corrected.

[drzeus99]

I assume this is the guy:
http://www.orlandoserrell.com/about.htm

There can't be too many people who became savants after being struck in the head with a baseball. The page says:

In addition, he can recall the weather, where he was, and what he was doing for every day since the accident.


Emphasis mine. It says nothing about recalling the weather 50 years before the accident.

This kind of memory is definitely impressive, but that's all it is--memory.

- Dr. Trintignant

Boy, looks like I really screwed the pooch on this one. Once again, I stand corrected. Looks like I don't even have the memory of your average everyday
mook. ;-)

[godless dave]

Well, there's over 1,250 prime numbers just up to the number 9999

He has no problem knowing if any 4 digit number is prime or not. I find it hard to believe he's memorized them all as some parlor trick. And there's no known way of quickly using an equation in your mind to figure out if a 4 digit number is prime or not, and always be correct within seconds.

And some people CAN do incredible mathematical calculations in their mind, (like people using an abacus but without the actual abacus to do the actual calculations). But those people have practiced for years, thousands of hours.
There's no indication that any of this has ever happened with Daniel in particular. Otherwise, he'd just be a math wiz..but there's much more to it.

The scientists who have studied and tested him are still lacking an explanation for his abilities.


You're correct that nobody has found an explanation for his abilities. Where you are incorrect is in assuming he isn't calculating. It seems likely that he is calculating, he is just doing it unconsciously and very, very fast. One hypothesis I've heard about people with these abilities is that they are tapping into a calculating ability all human brains have, but in a different way than most people.

[drzeus99]

You're correct that nobody has found an explanation for his abilities. Where you are incorrect is in assuming he isn't calculating. It seems likely that he is calculating, he is just doing it unconsciously and very, very fast. One hypothesis I've heard about people with these abilities is that they are tapping into a calculating ability all human brains have, but in a different way than most people.

That would definitely have to be considered as a possibility. Calculating, memorization.....both are clearly possibilities. And maybe it's one or the other, or a combination of both, without any conscious effort involved.

However it's done...it's still extremely fascinating, and something I hope can somehow be eventually useful to greater scientific understanding of the possibilities and capabilities of the human mind.

[Dr. Trintignant]

Boy, looks like I really screwed the pooch on this one. Once again, I stand corrected. Looks like I don't even have the memory of your average everyday
mook. ;-)

Hey, no problem. Us "normals" all have brain farts.

One think I find interesting about the whole thing is what it says about our senses. It's clear from synesthetes that the senses can be wired up in a different order, as well as being a bit mixed up. But I think these savants demonstrate that senses can be wired up to almost any signal at all in the brain--even signals that result from complex calculations, like whether a number is prime or not.

Further (I think), our senses are more complex than we give them credit for--when we see a green object, this isn't just a matter of our brain passing on the wavelength of light it receives to our consciousness. Instead, our brains compute whether an object is green, and pass on a sense of "greenness" to our consciousness which is tagged to an object in our field of vision. Synesthestes must have a kind of miswiring of their tagging mechanism. And savants have very complex calculations and mental results wired into this tagging system.

Put another way, most people (I do, at least, most of the time) tend to think of our vision as basically watching a movie. But I think the reality is that we have something more like "Terminator-vision", where everything in our vision is tagged with information about it, including contextual information derived from our memories and processing. The difference of course is that we "feel" this information, and don't read it as text.

That's my hypothesis, at least.

- Dr. Trintignant

[pgwenthold]

Ah, the good old Pearl Street zip code man. I even saw him do international zip codes....Germany, England, even Japan.

Then there was the social security number guy - tell him your social security number and he'd tell you the state you were born. Then clean out your bank accounts. Or steal your credit. Something like that.

[SatanicSheep]

I agree that the langauage fluency thing is highly subjective. English is my mother tongue but there's conversations that could be conducted in English that I would have little idea as to their meaning.

That being said it's pretty easy to fake fluency or at least overstate your ability. I do it in Korean all the time. It's just a matter of going with your "strengths" and "weaknesses" and those of the target language/cultural.

I'm not saying that it's not amazing and interesting that the guy learned Icelandic, just that language fluency is tough to measure and it can be easy to misrepresesent your level of ability.

[quarky]

I share the awe of the o.p. concerning savants.

This phenomena is as close to paranormal as it gets, and if we hadn't been familiar with it, through stories and reports, a person with such ability could have won the MDC.

I've heard of people that can repeat a classical piano song, after hearing it once, even though they can't tie their shoe. Maybe even because they can't tie their shoe.

I used to work at a group home for relatively high functioning developmentally disabled adults. One of the guys had the odd talent of singing a song backwards. He would spin his turntable slowly backward, with the needle down; no amplification, and memorize the bizarre sounds. i remember him proudly singing "Witchta Lineman" backwards for us one evening. He was very curious about theology, and asked pointed questions about god, the devil, the holy ghost, and so on.

He created his own trinity after awhile. There was god, god-damn, and god-damn-you.
That he could sing pop songs in reverse added some punch to his theology.
One time he spent 12 hours cutting a ball bearing in half with a hack saw.

[Herzblut]

That's more reasonable. I had a feeling something wasn't communicated properly in the O.P's post. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the program that was on television was purposely ambiguous about the supposed weather powers.
I wonder what kind of detectable capabilities Orlando Serrell is able to perform that almost all of us cannot achieve after some moderate training.

Calendar calculation is a pretty simple exercise. Check Wikipedia, if you don't believe it. And what he claims to have done on a given date is hardly verifiable, he can just make up things. Finally his weather memory, has it been thoroughly tested? I have not seen a rigorous test so far.

[Herzblut]

He even learned to speak fluent Finnish in 7 days, without ever having studied it before.

Really? How do you know? How could you possibly know?


It's one of the hardest languages to learn, and experts were baffled by his ability to do this.

I saw this test and was not amazed. It was not a hard language test.

[LissaLysikan]

You post just to say negative things, eh? Read something. Icelandic is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. He did it in 7 days. Take a look at what you are "poo poo"ing before getting on the keyboard and showing you know nothing of the topic. There is no "woo" in what Tammet does, but it's all the more impressive for the lack.

[Herzblut]

You post just to say negative things, eh? Read something. Icelandic is one of the hardest languages in the world to learn.

Little children playing in icelandic streets can handle it nevertheless, can't they? And what's the evidence to your claim? And what you call "negative" should actually be titled "sceptical". While I'm highly sceptical it seems you're not.


He did it in 7 days.

How do you know he didn't look into it before?


Take a look at what you are "poo poo"ing before getting on the keyboard and showing you know nothing of the topic. There is no "woo" in what Tammet does, but it's all the more impressive for the lack.
In contrast to you, I'm not easily impressed.

[NewtonTrino]

If he can only do 4 digit prime numbers I'm frankly not that impressed.

Anyway I can totally see the brain automatically factoring numbers and then showing you some sort of graph in your brain. If your brain did this for every number you heard primes would certainly look very odd in graph/color/synathesia form compared to something that has multiple factors.

When I was first reading the OP I was thinking about the prime numbers so large that we have a hard time calcuating them on the fastest cpu's. The largest known prime has almost 13 million digits so it would take a while to even input that into a brain!

[NewtonTrino]

Oh and I forgot to mention Zeller's congruence can be used to calculate the day of the week. There are also several modifications to the method applicable to human calculation so it's actually quite learnable by anyone.

[Herzblut]

Oh and I forgot to mention Zeller's congruence can be used to calculate the day of the week. There are also several modifications to the method applicable to human calculation so it's actually quite learnable by anyone.
What I said. I really wonder why people are so impressed about it.

[/URL][url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculating_the_day_of_the_week (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculating_the_day_of_the_week:)
"it is quite possible to do all the calculations in one's head with a little practice"

[LissaLysikan]

Little children playing in icelandic streets can handle it nevertheless, can't they? And what's the evidence to your claim? And what you call "negative" should actually be titled "sceptical". While I'm highly sceptical it seems you're not.


How do you know he didn't look into it before?


In contrast to you, I'm not easily impressed.

I know because I have read the studies done with Mr. Tammet. Apparently you have not. He has made himself available for quite some time to scientists for study - he is not a "woo" phenomenon trying to make a quick buck off rubes.
If you think Icelandic is easy to learn as a second language (more like 6th or 7th for Mr. Tammet), ask someone who has tried - you won't find ANYONE who says it was. There is a huge difference between growing up with a language and learning it as a second+.
I'm not easily impressed either - but instead of saying "oh, I saw a TV show and it didn't look impressive" I actually took the time to find out what he does and did.
But I guess actually looking into the facts wouldn't be skeptical, it would be research, and that would tarnish your reputation.

[Herzblut]

I know because I have read the studies done with Mr. Tammet. Apparently you have not.
How did the studies prove that he never looked into icelandic before?

[LissaLysikan]

Ah, well, proving that something didn't happen should be quite easy, no?
Be serious - it is not possible to prove someone DIDN'T do something. So you take the other studies, reputation, etc into account to decide what the probability is. If you decide that you think he studied Icelandic in secret prior to the experiment, there is no way to prove you are mistaken. It seems to be an unwarranted accusation, but I can't prove it false.

[Herzblut]

Ah, well, proving that something didn't happen should be quite easy, no?
Be serious - it is not possible to prove someone DIDN'T do something.

Well you claimed he didn't. I didn't claim anything, except my skepticism.


So you take the other studies, reputation, etc into account to decide what the probability is.

Oh no, this argument by authority is a serious fallacy, I think.


It seems to be an unwarranted accusation, but I can't prove it false.
What seems to be is not what we're looking for. What is is the question.

[shadron]

Well, there's over 1,250 prime numbers just up to the number 9999

He has no problem knowing if any 4 digit number is prime or not. I find it hard to believe he's memorized them all as some parlor trick. And there's no known way of quickly using an equation in your mind to figure out if a 4 digit number is prime or not, and always be correct within seconds.
Only 1250 prime numbers with four digits or less? I could memorize that and I'm no savant. Granted I have a near-photographic memory, but still, the task doesn't sound that difficult.

It is also important here to note that there are only 11 possible divisors to test at most to determine if any number up to 9999 is prime: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29 and 31. 2 & 5 can be eliminated with simple inspection; 3 by a simple casting-out-9s computation; so might some others that I'm not aware of. So that leaves 8 trial divisions to perform; a savant's mind could do the trial divisions for him easily (more easily, I would think, than dividing a couple of 6 digit numbers).

If he can only do 4 digit prime numbers I'm frankly not that impressed.
Indeed, but no one said that. Someone just remarked on what that would take for numbers up through 9999.

The one thing a savant seems to be able to do effortlessly is to keep temporary results immediately available, what we usually use paper and pencil for.

[shadron]

dup

[Doghouse Reilly]

On a related note, I don't know where people are getting this idea that Icelandic is somehow a very difficult language to learn. If you know English, German, Swedish, or Norwegian, it's not particularly difficult at all.
It sounds like it's being repeated the same way people repeat the old canard about us using only 10% of our brains.
For an English speaker, Chinese, Thai, or even Russian would be much, much more difficult to learn than Icelandic. And yet many people do accomplish even these feats of mental dexterity. Even without being a savant.
This is not to deny that Tammet has some very intriguing mental processes going on (I heartily recommend his book, as I mentioned earlier.)
But let's keep things in perspective.

[SatanicSheep]

Doghouse makes an excellent point. Depending on your mother tongue a second language will be more difficult for you than someone who's primary language is more closely related to the target. (With the rare exceptions of a few lingual isolates.)

[quarky]

Amazing math ability could be seen as fairly normal; even do-able, for those with the patience to learn the tricks. But people that have awesome memory skills...that's harder to relate to, for me. Are they wired differently? Do they necessarily have a weakness in other areas?

[roger]

Ah, the good old Pearl Street zip code man. I even saw him do international zip codes....Germany, England, even Japan.
Not hard to do with an earpiece and an accomplice with a wifi enabled laptop.

[Doghouse Reilly]

Not hard to do with an earpiece and an accomplice with a wifi enabled laptop.

True, but this was pre-laptop and pre wi-fi.

Edited to add: well, maybe not pre-laptop, but definitely it was pre-high speed internet connection and pre-wifi.