The Adventures of a Confounded Spinning Ball

The Boy With The Incredible Brain -- Critiqued

2008-01-26T08:52:05Z

Lately I've been encouraged to make more of my posts unlocked. I only do that under certain circumstances, but I feel this is an important occasion because I believe I have spotted a hoax and that I am unusually qualified to unmask it.

I just watched The Boy With the Incredible Brain, a video that spoonless posted in his journal. Given the buildup, I was expecting to see something I'd never seen before, but I was very surprised -- the "savant" Daniel is much slower than I am at all the computations. Not a little slower. A lot.

That's fine. I know I'm an oddball as a "lightning calculator", so I'm not all that disappointed that Daniel can't beat me at a calculating contest. What I'm disappointed with is my perception of the whole video -- with both him and the scientists who are studying him. I smell grant money at the end of somebody's rainbow.

Before I go any further, I need to debunk the spectacular nature of the computations he was given. They are, to build an analogy, lightly tossed softballs, meant to be hit out of the park by somebody who spends a lot of time swinging at softballs.

He's given 37 to the power of 4. Here's how it's done: 37 squared is 1369. Somebody like Daniel (and me) knows this much by heart. I knew the squares of all two-digit numbers by heart when I was 11 just because I had practiced the process so much, looking for simpler and simpler methods for working with numbers.

37 to the 4th is 1369 squared. Well, that's not all that bad actually. I taught an 11 year old how to do it in just a few minutes that other day. That very number in fact. There are several ways to go about it, but one is to square 1370, then note that
1370^2 - 1369^2 = (1370 + 1369)(1370 - 1369) = 2739.
Squaring 137 is not that hard:
137^2 = (100 + 37)^2 = 100^2 + 2*37*100 + 37^2 = 10000 + 7400 + 1369 = 18769.

The next problem is dividing 13 by 97. This is a trick that I developed in middle school, and I loved it so much that I included it in my first book. I'll show 1/97, which will best demonstrate the effect:
1/97 = 1/100 + 3/100^2 + 3^2/100^3 + 3^3/100^4 + ...
Since 97 = 100 - 3, I was able to cleverly rewrite 1/97 as an infinite geometric series. Now the computations are simple:
1/97 = 0.01030927835051546391752577319587...
I can spit those digits out as fast I can pronounce them, which is much faster than Daniel did it. The key is to work with the digits in pairs, multiply each pair by 3, then adding 1 for each 1/3 of 100 we result surpasses. For instance, 13/97, we start with 13*3 = 39 and add 1 because 39 is more than 1/3 of 100:
0. 13 40
Now, we multiply 40*3 to get 120. We already used the 1 to add to 39, so we ignore it. So, we now have
0. 13 40 20
Next, 20*3 = 60, plus 1 because 60 is between 1/3 and 2/3 of 100:
0. 13 40 20 61
Next, 61*3 = 183. We ignore the 1 in front and add 2:
0.1340206185...

Once you have the hang of the method, producing more digits is quite simple. Daniel says he might be able to go up to 100 digits. I can go up to infinity digits, discounting time constraints. I could spit 100 out before the first minute was up.

But it does sound more dramatic to say 100, and it keeps the cards hidden if you're playing the game that I'm playing -- computing using a convenient series. You can't say you can spit out infinitely many, or somebody will catch on.

That's okay, I think I caught on anyway.

27 to the power of 7? Well, that's 3 to the power of 21. I knew the powers of 3 by heart back when I worked so many contest problems. No big deal. But, I don't remember 3^21 now, though I'm confident I can compute it quickly for several reasons, the biggest being that I still remember 3^10, which is 59049. That's an easy number to square:
3^20 = (59000 + 49)^2 = 59000^2 + 2*59000*49 + 49^2
Multiplication by another power of 3 is in fact the hardest part by far, but still not so bad. After all, we're not all that impressed by people who can multiply by 3, even if it's by ten digit numbers, right?

Even if I didn't recall 59049, it's not hard to get there. I could square 3^5 = 243. I could just multiply by 9 several times over. After all, 9 = 10 - 1:
6561*9 = 6561(10 - 1) = 65610 - 6561.

31 to the power of 6? Not that hard. 31 squared is 961. Now we can use binomial expansion on (100 - 39) to dramatically simplify the computation. The calculation is no harder than cubing 39 ultimately.

There might be methods for any of the above problems that I did not explore. Each of these methods came to mind literally within the first second that I heard each problem, which should display that they are just a matter of training. Just reflexes.

And they don't involve shapes and colors.

Note that they never once asked Daniel to multiply 7139 times 41562. Why did I pick a problem like that? Because there's very little special about the numbers, except that they don't contain the shortcuts inherent in every one of the problems Daniel worked in the documentary. They’re not even particularly easy to factor, so there’s no quick reconstruction to save the day.

It seems to me that the only reason not to test Daniel with such computations is that he is using methods like mine -- not seeing shapes and colors or whatever weird method he claims.

I also noticed that during the very first problem in the video, Daniel moves his fingers in a useful way. I don't believe he's "playing with shapes and colors" or something like that. I recognize those finger movements. Not precisely, but back when I was learning mental arithmetic (when I was only about as good at it as Daniel is), I would move my hands more than I need to now. It's a lot like what the Chinese kids working on the mental abacus. It's a mental imagine of real calculation. Those finger movements give the game away. Perhaps not alone, but along with everything I saw in that video, I have to conclude that Daniel's explanation of "spontaneous computation" from "shapes and colors" is a sham.

Note that the hard-drilled Chinese children can multiply any two four-digit numbers. So why is Daniel hailed, at the end of the video, as "one of 50" such high level savants in the world?

Perhaps because somebody wants a research grant?

Memorization

So the guy memorizes digits of pi. That's just what he puts his mind to doing. Lots of people do it. Memorize 7 digits a day, which is just a phone number, and in ten years you'll know as many digits of pi as he does. Particularly if people pat you on the head a lot along the way. It is, after all, mostly a matter of motivation. Since more people started paying attention to the record, the record has grown very very quickly. I know just a couple of years ago a Japanese guy hit 100,000 digits. Oddly, it's a common obsession, and all kinds of people from around the world have shown an ability to memorize thousands of digits of pi.

I did find it impressive that he could learn a new language in a week, but I remember studying for the first semester exam during my first year of German. I learned hundreds of words in a couple of days, including verb conjugations and noun genders. German was the first language in which I learned a several hundred word vocabulary outside of English. I imagine that if I'd learned several languages, I would better be able to learn a new one. Particularly if I could clear my mind and focus on nothing else. I feel quite confident that were I focused more on languages, I could teach children to learn languages quickly -- particularly while immersed in the country that speaks the language, walking around with a trained tutor.

Also, 10 minutes to memorize a chess board?! That's a whole lot of time. I bet I know plenty of people who can do that. I'll bet that I can do it. I bet when I was 12 I could do it in under a minute. In fact, I suspect I could have trained myself to do it in 10 seconds.

Once, when I was in middle school, the drama teacher, Mrs. McCord (sp?) asked everyone in class their birth date. When she was done, she asked everyone to name the birth date of the last person who spoke. Around half the class remembered the birth date of the person before them. When it came my turn, I recited every one of them, which was 24 total birth dates.

I can't do that anymore, but I have plenty of witnesses to similar events. I think that the primary reason my memory no longer works that way is that I've trained myself to focus on other things. I focus on processing information, not storing it. Information is cheap after all -- why focus my brainpower on it?

I don't think such feats of memorization are particularly spectacular. I was one of eight players in an exhibition against Vivek Rao in which he played us blindfolded and beat us all. Most of us were pretty good players too (tournament players). Granted, I told him beforehand what opening I planned to play, but still. Isn't that a lot more impressive?

I found an a discussion of Daniel's Pi memorization process:

Daniel studied the sequence – a thousand numbers to a page.

"And I would sit and I would gorge on them. And I would just absorb hundreds and hundreds at a time," he tells Safer.

This strikes me as exaggeration. He doesn't "aborb hundreds and hundreds" of digit in the sense of memorizing them all at once. If he could do that, his 22k+ digit memorization display would be small change. The constant sense of exaggeration in Daniel's story erodes an enormous amount of credibility in my mind to his explanations of his ability.

Blackjack

That junk about the blackjack -- pure quackery. That's an experiment that can be repeated and he'll lose with those split 7's -- over and over again for each win. That seals the deal on my opinion that he's overstating his abilities. What's happened is that he's given up on trying to count numbers. He hasn't practiced, and the conditions are not ideal. So he just starts bullshitting. Who knows what didn't get filmed or didn't make the final cut.

He'd need to train to count cards, just like any other person with some number skills. The researchers or documentary makers were reaching on this one. They fell flat and probably don't realize how flimsy the rest of his abilities appear at this point, at least in regards to what Daniel is claiming about "shapes and colors".

Play-Doh

This is where the story goes from silly to insulting my intelligence. There is nothing scientific about what's going on in that test. Daniel clearly has a good memory, that's all. They'd have gotten the same result from me and many others. It's insulting because they present this test as if it should be regarded as some kind of "final proof" of Daniel's ability to see numbers as shapes and colors.

Notice that Daniel never said, "Um, 242 isn't just one color, and it's cobalt blue, with streaks of silver and green polka dots." Amazingly, all the numbers happen to be single colors that are all represented in a standard play-doh kit.

Now, I'm not going to say that's "an intentionally sham experiment designed to reach for research dollars." I won't say it. It...just...might...be...that...God made the universe so that Daniel's brain sees in play-doh-vision.

It also strikes me that the way I tend to memorize numbers has a lot to do with context. If somebody gave me play-doh and told me to build numbers, I bet I'd come up with a method using prime factorizations. You could ask me five years later, and I'd recall that method. So it's not even an amazing feat of memory. It's just matter of the fact that understanding prime factorizations -- one of the truly obvious methods for organizing values of integers that is just beyond the mental reach of observers -- turns the problem into swinging at another big softball. Pow!

Anxiety Over Pi

And so what that he has anxiety when shown a pattern that deviates from his familiar mental picture of pi? That's not a "mean" test -- it's at best meaningless beyond the fact that Daniel has great affinity for pi, and at worst a softball served up to make Daniel look really mathy.

Here are my takes on a few choice quotes in the piece:

"His childhood holds a dramatic clue." (7:53)

I love this line. The drama is not the clue, but the effect of buildup the line itself has on an audience, talking the audience into believing whatever conclusions are conjured by the end. But really, Daniel's childhood betrays the real story -- that a kid who focuses on numbers develops special abilities for working with them.

That is in fact the premise of my career as a math teacher. It's that simple. I know because I've taught the methods I used above to dozens of children.

"By most measures, Daniel is autistic, but he's also picked up enough social skills to blend in." (14:41)

This quote really struck me. It's true that Daniel is interesting in some regard. While I've bashed his computational abilities, that's mostly because I think his "shapes and colors" story is nothing more than a cheap grab at attention (for which I feel only pity). Daniel's social skills are not horrible, but they're not par either.

Although I am more social than Daniel is, I see a great deal of similarity between our social abilities. I think mine are more well-developed due to necessity, but that’s another story. I post this quote partially because I am still unsure as to whether or not I am a high functioning autistic. I blend in well, and always have, but if Daniel is autistic, that makes me think that I probably am too.

"…his symptoms are not really interfering, currently, with his life."

My opinion on the matter of my own autism goes back and forth. By checklist, I am certainly high functioning autistic, but I feel like autism is particularly poorly described by symptom (as disorders are defined) – we need to find a way to describe how the clockwork in us is different.

I believe my clockwork is much like Daniel's. I can see it in his every move. If he is autistic, then I am autistic.

"One day you'll be as great as I am." (28:12)

Superb line, and probably helps with the charade that Daniel and Kim are alike in some way. But I don't buy it at all.

The greatest similarity between Kim and Daniel is intense memory. but Kim's is far more intense. He concentrates more wholly on his savant abilities. Of course, Daniel is more social, which may itself explain some of the difference. But overall, it's not clear that Kim is capable of less intensity, though Daniel certainly is.

”I’m very much a big skeptic of this.” (32:30)

Azoulai stuck me as one of the least skeptical scientists I’ve ever witnessed. His body language is of a person who wants to be impressed. But truthfully, I’m taking my shot at him here because the tests I saw in this documentary were so flimsy that I can’t respect him as a scientist.

"It was something that you just can't fake. These are the things specifically that are showing me that he's not bullshitting and he's not scamming. Even the mistakes that Daniel makes are the mistakes that are telling me 'you know what? This is legit. A faker wouldn't be doing this.'" (39:39)

A faker wouldn't do this? That's a scientific opinion? I thought science was about testing a hypothesis. I can test the hypothesis. I have. I've taught middle schoolers to do nearly all the "amazing" things Daniel did in the video.

But I have a strong opinion about this quote. I can't prove it, but it's the kind of quote that comes out of somebody's mouth when they're staging something. The whole video seems to have this defensive quality to it. This fits of course with my opinion that the computations are staged.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not accusing the researchers of staging the actual moments of computation. They’re just throwing him softballs.

"This could be the linchpin that spawns a whole new field of research. (40:56)

I find it utterly amazing that Daniel's shapes weren't put to any rigorous testing. I bet I could debunk them in 5 minutes. A researcher just says, "Wow, I'm blown away" as Daniel looks away, looking anxious.

This line, with lack of all credible backing, does nothing but support my case.

"The line between profound talent...and profound disability seems really a surprisingly thin one." (46:18)

That sounds to me like something somebody might say if they've gone through life playing mental games, never doing anything productive, finally deciding to play their cards in hoax, hoping for something good to happen. Hoping perhaps for a little fame.

"The bigger question is whether we all have some of those abilities within us. And that is what I refer to as the little rainman within us." (46:43)

Wow, that's so warm and fuzzy it makes me want to puke.

It is an interesting question, but the answer is plain: there are far more than 50 people with the abilities described in the documentary. There aren't a lot of people like "the real rain man", but Daniel isn't like that either, even if he wants to act like he is. Daniel is just a guy with a pretty high IQ who claims to squash shapes and sizes together to computer numbers.

Further Evidence and Questions

I would be interested in knowing how all these shapes and sizes mash together when Daniel divides one integer by another.

If Daniel's abilities are so abnormal -- if he uses shapes and sizes to compute in ways he can't explain...why is his primary profession as a tutor?

In the Wikipedia article on Daniel Tammet, his synaesthesia is explained as such:

In his mind, he says, each number up to 10,000 has its own unique shape, color, texture and feel. He can intuitively "see" results of calculations as synesthesic landscapes without using conscious mental effort, and that he can "sense" whether a number is prime or composite. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi as beautiful. 6 apparently has no distinct image.

If you’re doing mental computation, 17 is an ugly number to work with. Unless you couple it with another number, like 6 (to make 6*17 = 102), it’s hard to find a nice way to multiply by 17. 17 squared is 289. Now, when doing large computations, you have to pair 17 with “nice” numbers twice to perform well. So, if 289 is involved, the computations are “ugly” to try to do mentally. It makes for a nice excuse if you miss those problems: “The squiggles in my head were ugly this time – hard to read.”

On the other hand, multiplication by 333 is extraordinarily easy because 3*333 = 999 = 1000 – 1.

Powers of 10 are, as I have alluded to already, the key to quick mental computation. It strikes me as convenient for Daniel to have picked a power of 10 to stop at for “seeing” numbers as shapes, colors, and textures. If I wanted to script a story like his, that’s exactly what I would do. It would make all the crap I made up easier to remember anyway.

Edit: I just came across post 463 in which somebody points out that the "Pi landscape" story contradicts Daniel's stated method of memorizing sequences of digits.

Unfair credit practices of CMRE Financial Services, Inc.

2007-07-16T19:28:31Z

This is the first post I've made public in a while, and I'm doing so because I want to publicly shame everyone involved.

Just over two years ago, I was treated in the emergency room at Grossmont Hospital. I received several bills for my treatment, and paid them all within a few weeks, in a pretty normal way.

Last month, I received a call from CMRE Financial Services Inc., informing me of an unpaid bill from that 2005 visit. My response was, "Of course I'll pay any bill that I owe," though I wondered how such a bill had escaped my attention. I was told I would be sent a form that I would sign, confirming the credit card payment of the bill.

A month later, I received a call from the same lady (Rudy Mendez), this time more urgent (sounded a little rude really), demanding I pay the bill. I inform her (correctly) that I have not received the bill she promised to mail. At this time, she asks me to confirm my address. She states that I live on (B)oltaire Street, but I live on (V)oltaire Street. Ah, now I see why I never received a bill. She says she will resend the bill to my address.

The second bill arrives before the first, but I get them both. I'm irritated because more than a sixth of the bill is interest owed on the original bill. I should not be responsible for the interest accrued due to somebody else's billing error. Not only that, but clearly they have my phone number, and before last month, nobody to my knowledge ever called to tell me about this bill.

So, today I call CMRE, thinking that they'll reason with me and allow me to pay only the original portion of the bill. After all, the fact that the bill is two years delinquent is somebody's fault other than mine.

They don't care.

As I try to explain my complaint to Rudy, she raises her voice slightly and starts talking quickly over me, keeping me from communicating my point. So, I raise my voice slightly above hers to ask her to just hear me out. This happens several times, at which point she asks me not to shout, trying to take the rhetorical high ground.

Well trained at the art of convincing people to give her money is this jedi.

Part of me simply wants to refuse to pay CMRE anything at this point. The problem is that this bill is stuck on my credit rating, which will no doubt sap money from me in the future when I do something like take out a mortgage.

I ask to speak to Ruby's manager, and we go through the same exact ordeal. However, this time I'm told that CMRE had tried to call me many times over the past two years. Wow! Really? On this line she tells me.

I have flat out never talked to anyone from CMRE before Ruby. I have never even heard of CMRE. I had no idea that I had an unpaid medical bill of any kind, and I certainly would not have left it unpaid as it amounts to a tiny fraction of my wealth, and the damage it does to my credit rating is worth far more than the bill itself.

Beyond that, nobody ever called and talked to me before my bill was sent to a collection agency. I asked the manager of CMRE if she could provide a phone record of her company contacting me. She responded that legally, she's not required to do that, which is a mildly clever and obtuse way to refuse to answer the question. I responded that I wasn't asking about legal requirements, that I was just asking if she was capable of demonstrating to me that phone calls were made (that I never received!). She parroted out the exact same line about not being legally required. This of course not only makes me angrier than I was before, but makes me feel like she simply does not care that I am not responsible for the error made, and is simply following legal guidelines her company came up with to try to stonewall my requests for a reasonable assessment of the situation.

She also did a lot of the same talking over me that Ruby did, trying to twist my half-spoken complaint to try to make it sound as if I'm responsible, regardless of the error. When I asked her how she would feel in my shoes, being asked to pay a fine that was the result of somebody else's clerical error. She responded by saying that this wasn't a personal matter (she refused to answer the question) and simply reiterated a canned quote about how I have an unpaid bill.

And hey, if they'd tried to call me before, and it happened to be one of the rare instances in which I don't answer my phone (other than class time), then there's this nice system called voice mail they could have used to make me aware of the circumstances.

So, I call the original medical group that referred my bill to CMRE, Grossmont ER Medical Group. Of course, I had to do the footwork to find their number myself, because CMRE wouldn't give it to me, and I didn't (easily) find it on Google. The first thing I do is ask the lady on the phone to correct my address, which she does.

Next, I explain the situation to her. I already know that the payment process is out of her [group's] hands, but I am more interested in finding out if she cares about the business practices of CMRE. This tells me a lot about the medical group itself, and how it treats people. While she was very polite, she doesn't sound the least bit sympathetic over the fact that I never received a bill from her group. She says simply that the bill was never returned by mail, so it goes to the collection agency. She gives no reason why my phone number was never used to track me down. And she seems perfectly comfortable with the collection agency's response to the problem.

Just to summarize my thoughts on how to resolve this situation: I am absolutely, perfectly comfortable paying the $318.00 I owe for medical services. Just on principle, I am irritated over paying $63.49 in interest (at a 10% interest rate!) to clear my credit history.

But here I am, held hostage. I feel that this is tantamount to extortion.

So, why would a collection agency operate this way?

I suggest a few reasons:

(1) It's not worth my time to sue them. Even if I get the standard $1k or $2k payout for being jerked around, that's less than I will earn from the amount of work I will perform with that time. I suspect I'll send payment in later today, in full, including interest, after I'm done steaming over it all;
(2) Surely there are PACs buying senators to make it easier for collection agencies to operate this way (DISCLAIMOR: I have no proof of this, but it...jives with my common sense.);
(3) The medical groups and hospitals protect the collection agencies, and regard their practices as reasonable. And of course, all doctors are good people who care about their patients. More of that high ground that's just harder to climb. Beyond that, this feeds into point (1) where the medical billing group makes itself hard to Google and find a phone number for in general, making it harder for somebody like me to feel there is any reasonable way to resolve the issue.
(4) Either I have plenty of money, and the interest means nothing to me, or I don't have a lot of money, and paying an attorney is a gamble with a hefty price-tag.

I have a little bit of sympathy for (3), where the medical groups feel the need to work with collection agencies. Of course they do! But they should force these agencies to compete ethically. I am not the deliquent they paint me to be. I am being charged interest for a clerical error that occurred within the hospital.

What's really outrageous is this -- all my other bills came to me! -- and I paid them, yet my track record of paying all my bills seems to be of no consequence to the collection agency, or even the medical group that retains their services.

Even worse, I'm now a little worried that I don't actually know what will happen with my credit score. Will this be red-lined? During my first conversation, Miss Mendez told me that it would be taken off as if it were never there. But considering we've now had a disagreement over responsibility, and I couldn't trust her to act in a way I consider reasonable -- can I trust her to red-line it off my credit report? Will I be forced to seek legal respresentation anyway? If so, then I shouldn't pay the interest to begin with.

So, here is my response, a lengthy blog post, detailed and accurate, and very public. PLEASE PROVIDE A LINK TO THIS POST IN YOUR BLOG SO THAT GOOGLE PICKS UP ON IT AND DIRECTS PEOPLE TO IT. Right now, I feel that this is the best way for me to fight back. It's not a large amount of money, but it is a matter of principle, and it's wrong for people to make a living strong-arming a person like me who is happy to pay the bills that are due him.

I will edit this post later, and turn it into a format more closely resembling a letter. I plan to mail it to every television station and newspaper in Southern California I can easily find an address for. I hope as many people as possible read this and know that I

(1) Do not endorse the services at Grossmont Hospital as a result of their billing practices;
(2) Do not endorse the services of Grossmont ER Group as a result of their billing practices and partner in bill collection; and
(3) Question the ethics of CMRE, and think it's very possible that the people who work there are either desperate for any job, worship the dollar, and/or sacrifice babies in the name of the dark lord, Voldamort.

So, what should I do? Am I right to just sign off on the extra interest, and wash my hands of this whole affair? Should I fight it out of principle? If so, how do I fight it? If I retain an attorney, is there a good chance I'll just pay for his services and get nothing in return?

Thank you for taking the time to read my complaint. Feel free to post below, and hyperbolize about how this kind of credit battle signifies the coming of the anti-Christ. The end is nigh!

It's Just a Blog

2006-10-17T06:56:04Z

This is abblog. If you want to read something in it besides this post, you must be on my friends list. You can request to be on my friends list here. However, I might ignore. I might also add you. Beyond that, I have several filtering levels. If you request to read my journal, you should tell me enough about yourself for me to know what filters I should add you under. That includes such information as your status as an adult/minor. And your hat size. Actually, hat size is really all I'm interested in.