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Improving Your Mental Math Skills?
Infrared-Archer asks: "I want to learn how to do most math calculations in my head. That way I won't have to reach for the calculator for problems I should be able to do mentally. Of course there are various websites (beat the calculator) that show many tricks, but I am looking for a comprehensive solution (books, websites) that shows how to solve of wide range of math problems mentally. Any suggestions?"
Yeah, I basically do it the same way, except I usually use logarithms and double precision floating point, then I just round off (ceiling or floor) to the nearest 128-bit integer.
Takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, it's a piece of cake.
Heck, thanks matey, that's OK, but most of us will be in your neighbourhood this time next year hunting down IT jobs, so we can pick them up then.
Thanks again.
Some are for dylexics
Obviously.
An excellent way to do truly astounding mathematics is to train your subconscious to work for you. Your subconscious records lots of things and basically remembers them forever. Your conscious mind often has trouble recalling certain memories or details though, but that doesn't mean it's not still there.
The trick then is to let your subconscious do the math for you, and then find a way to "pull out" the answer (like recalling a distant memory, almost). You can train your subconscious to do math a variety of ways, but one of the most effective is to electrically stimulate nerves (in your hand or arm or thigh, whatever) to count out numbers. So for instance, if you wanted to do 22+34, you'd count out 56 quick electic pulses. Practicing this for a few months, your subconscious will eventually get the idea that when you hear numbers, you want them added. The electric shocks will no longer be necessary, but your subconscious will still internall 'tick' out the answer. It works for multiplication, too, and through various mathematical tricks, you can use it to subtract and divide.
The only remaining difficulty is training your conscious mind to retrieve the result. This is accomplished via a hypnosis-like state. You can get good at it so that it only takes you a half-second to pull out the resulting number. No eyes rolling back or chanting or anything like that.
Heh, ok, not really.
And THAT'S why imperial units is superior to metric! ;)
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
If I attempt to perform a calculation in my head, I can often see the tricks to make it doable, but can't hold on to more than a couple of intermediate values. Particularly if I'm trying to keep track of mantissas and exponents at the same time. I usually need some random access storage (pen and paper) to hold the temporary variables.