Google’s tribute doodle to Shakuntala Devi on her 84th
birthday today made me proud to be an Indian. I am sure a lot of young people
from India have no idea who she is. Popularly known as the “Human Computer” she
was a great inspiration to many Indians of my generation. Her talents earned
her a place in the Guinness Book of World records in 1982.
I started disliking Google since they started spamming the
world with Google Plus, their so-called Social Network (a.k.a graveyard). However
today’s tribute made me find a newfound respect for them. Google seems to want their
Doodles to serve as both a celebration and an educational tool, keeping people
informed of characters and events of which they might never have been aware. Shakuntala
Devi will certainly be remembered more fondly due their efforts.
We grew up reading her books on mathematics and puzzles in numerous
novels. She published the first book in India on homosexuality in 1977, which
was amazing given the conservative state of India and the world in general on
the topic at that time. Arthur Jensen from the University of California,
Berkeley, studied her and Jensen’s findings were published in the academic
journal of intelligence in 1990. Her mental ability at arithmetic’s was
unparalleled and unmatched by any one of her time.
The legend had received no formal education in mathematics.
At the age of 10, she was admitted to first grade at St Theresa’s Convent in
Chamarajpet. But her parents could not afford the monthly fee of 2 Rs. She was
thrown out of the school after three months To cite an example, at the Harvard
University she was asked to derive the 23rd root of a 201 digit number which
she answered in five seconds whereas a computer took 15 seconds. The people assembled
there were drawn to a standing ovation for her skill. Her brainpower made her
world famous and she visited countries all over the world and wherever she went
she astounded her audience.
While at Ratnam Residential Junior College, a colleague of
mine name Sashidhar was our schools version of Shakuntala Devi. He could do
arithmetic faster than it would take time for us to input the data into our calculator.
When asked how he does it, he said he was trained in the Trachtenberg system of
arithmetic, which makes the high-speed arithmetical calculations with a
remarkable degree of accuracy possible. Jakow Trachtenberg (1888-1953)
developed this system during the seven years he spent in Nazi concentration
camps during World War II to keep his sanity.
I tried, all the mental mathematics techniques including the
Mental Abacus, Vedic Mathematics, and Chisanbop (finger counting method), all
to no avail. It just takes too much time to master them, but I appreciate those
who have the patience to master them. Scholars, often on the humanities side,
prefer to have as little to do with numbers as possible. But numbers, in my
opinion, are a part of life, so we better learn to live with them.
No comments:
Post a Comment