Shakuntala Devi, the Indian ‘human computer,’ passed away on Sunday. The NY Times first did a profile on her when she visited the US in 1976, during which she computed the cube root of a 9 digit…
I collected some links about the totally awesome arithmetic genius Shakuntala Devi above. Like Ramanujan before her, she couldn’t explain how she was able to do computations in her head. I have sometimes felt that way (though, I’m a lilliputian and she is a Giant). In grad school, homework + teaching always took forever as I struggled to formulate the patterns in my head in formal math language, so I could submit my assignments and teach my students. The explanation in my head had its own internal logic that I developed without knowing.
When I was an undergraduate, I spent a quarter in a special program for mathematicians in the social sciences. Basically, the teachers were supposed to be best the dept had to offer, so that all the future consultants could be as coddled as possible on their way to their summer internships at Arthur Andersen (yes, young people, it was still Andersen back then). I had to take Advanced Linear Algebra as a math major, but the teacher that quarter was supposed to be terrible, so I switched into the special program just so I could take the special class with the better instructor. I don’t know if that was the best idea, as the professor had the same problem I had — he had a hard time translating what was in his head to the class. I remember him trying to explain change of basis/matrix transformations as horses leaping from one side to the other, changing color from white to red. Ah, Ken Mount, how all those future I-bankers hated you! I was just confused — but man, did I totally have flashbacks when teaching Advanced Linear Algebra to my own class of undergrads. i.e. Reason #327 why I left academia.
