Mental calculation

Wikiversity has learning resources about Mental Calculation

Mental calculation (also known as

An exceptional ability is mental calculation such as adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing large numbers.

Skilled calculators were necessary in research centers such as CERN before the advent of modern electronic calculators and computers. See, for instance, Steven B. Smith's 1983 book The Great Mental Calculators, or the 2016 book Hidden Figures^[11] and the film adapted from it.

The Mental Calculation World Cup is an international competition that attempts to find the world's best mental calculator, and also the best at specific types of mental calculation, such as addition, multiplication, square root or calendar reckoning. The first Mental Calculation World Cup ^[12] took place in 2004. It is an in-person competition that occurs every other year in Germany. It consists of four different standard tasks --- addition of ten ten-digit numbers, multiplication of two eight-digit numbers, calculation of square roots, and calculation of weekdays for given dates --- in addition to a variety of "surprise" tasks.^[12] The last edition was organized in September 2024 and won by Aaryan Nitin Shukla, who successfully defended his title to become two time World Champion.

The Mind Sports Olympiad has staged annual world championships since 1998.

The first international Memoriad ^[13] was held in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2008. The second Memoriad took place in Antalya, Turkey, on 24–25 November 2012. 89 competitors from 20 countries participated. Awards and money prizes were given for 10 categories in total; of which 5 categories had to do about Mental Calculation (Mental addition, Mental Multiplication, Mental Square Roots (non-integer), Mental Calendar Dates calculation and Flash Anzan). The third Memoriad was held in Las Vegas, USA, from November 8, 2016 through November 10, 2016.

The Mind Sports Organisation recognizes six grandmasters of mental calculation: Robert Fountain (1999), George Lane (2001), Gert Mittring (2005), Chris Bryant (2017), Wenzel Grüß (2019), and Kaloyan Geshev (2022), and one international master, Andy Robertshaw (2008). In 2021, Aaryan Nitin Shukla became the youngest champion ever at an age of just 11 years.

• Thufir Hawat, are Mentats. Paul Atreides
  was originally trained as one without his knowledge. However, these Mentats do not specialize in mathematical calculations, but in total recall of many different kinds of data. For example, Thufir Hawat is able to recite various details of a mining operation, including the number of various pieces of equipment, the people to work them, the profits and costs involved, etc. In the novel he is never depicted as doing actual academic mathematical calculations. Mentats were valued for their capacity as humans to store data, because "thinking machines" are outlawed.
• Roald Dahl's novel Matilda, the lead character is portrayed having exceptional computational skills as she computes her father's profit without the need for paper computations. During class (she is a first-year elementary school student), she does large-number multiplication problems in her head almost instantly.
• Andrew Jackson "Slipstick" Libby is a calculating prodigy in
  Sci-Fi story Methuselah's Children
  .
• Haruki Murakami's novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a class of mental calculators known as Calcutecs perform cryptography in a sealed-off portion of their brains, the results of which they are unable to access from their normal waking consciousness.

• In the 1988 movie Rain Man, Raymond Babbitt, who has savant syndrome, can mentally calculate large numbers, amongst other abilities.

• In the 1991 movie Little Man Tate, Fred Tate in the audience blurts out the answer during a mental calculation contest.
• In the 1997 Sci-Fi thriller Cube, one of the prisoners, Kazan, appears to be mentally disabled, but is revealed later in the film to be an autistic savant who is able to calculate prime factors in his head.
• In 1998 Darren Aronofsky's film Pi, Maximillian Cohen is asked a few times by a young child with a calculator to do large multiplications and divisions in his head, which he promptly does, correctly.
• In 1998 film
  autistic savant with prodigious math abilities cracks a top secret
  government code.

• In the
  Suits
  , the main character, Mike Ross, is asked to multiply considerably large numbers in his head to impress two girls, and subsequently does so.
• In the Fox television show
  Malcolm Wilkerson
  displays astounding feats of automatic mental calculation, which causes him to fear his family will see him as a "freak", and causes his brother to ask, "Is Malcolm a robot?".
• In the 1990s NBC TV sitcom NewsRadio, reporter/producer Lisa Miller can mentally calculate products, quotients, and square roots effortlessly and almost instantly, on demand.
• In the 2007 sitcom The Big Bang Theory, the main character, Sheldon Cooper, calculates numbers and solutions in his head for his theoretical physics research.
• In the 2008 show Breaking Bad, the main character, Walter White, is shown to calculate most of the numbers to his deals, such as profit and production costs, purely within his head.
• In another Fox television show,
  nootropics
  and as a result has become a mathematical genius. The individual is able to calculate hundreds of equations simultaneously, which he leverages to avoid being returned to his original state of cognitive impairment.
• In the 2014 TV series Scorpion, Sylvester Dodd, a gifted mathematician and statistician with an IQ of 175; he is described as a "human calculator".