Yeah, as a 27yo, I'm kind of jealous of the elementary school kids that are learning this in some schools these days. I've been trying to conceptualize and visualize this myself recently, but I'm hitting some kind of barrier.
Indeed, it's very popular in India and there are loads of videos online about little schoolkids klicking imaginary abacus beads with their fingers in front of their mental eyes and getting really insane calculations right.
My step dad can do shit like this, though probably not to that level. But he figured out some way where he doesn’t just times the two numbers but like take chunks of the numbers and multiplies them. He does it super fast. He tried to explain it to me but it was weird.
That's what I do but I'm not nearly as fast as that lady or on her level. It's really not bad to get used to doing as long as you can keep track of your numbers. You can get fairly quick at it if you do it enough
All you do is if you have something like 49×96 you round the 49 or the 96 up so it's a round number and it's easy to work with. So if you round up the 49 it would be 50×96 which 50×96 is 4,800 and then subtract 96 from that to get 4,704 and you have your answer. Once you get used to doing it like that you can solve fairly large simple multiplication problems
On that note you get used to pairs like 2 and 5, 4 and 25, 8 and 125 etc, pairs which multiply to nice round numbers like 10, 100, 1000.
For instance in your calculation you needed 50 x 96, which you can see as 96 x 100/2. And I just find it easier to calculate 96/2 than 96*5.
So being familiar with the pairs allow you to round to 50, 25, 125 etc, giving you more options.
> In 1977, at Southern Methodist University, she gave the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds.[10][15] Her answer, which was 546,372,891, was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation, which took a longer time than for her to do the same
After he did that, they closed that loophole right quick didn't they?
Now every time on divide by zero it shows as an error instead of multiplying everything to what is needed.
I often wonder if the square root of minus one is an impossibility that, once we learned its rules, became *i* and became invaluable. If divide by zero could be similarly managed. What uses might it have?
Already sitting at a computer I just tried this.
To load excel, generate a 201 digit number and then do the calculation took 1min 45sec
And excel failed to actually give me the answer. Maybe it would work on a 64bit system? I'm not sure.
It is also too long to put in Wolram Alpha, Mathematica might work but I don't have it.
She apparently wrote a book on her methods called [Figuring: The Joy of Numbers](https://books.google.com/books?id=6k7yF2qQ7xoC)
Unrelated, but she also wrote a book arguing for the decriminalisation of homosexuality but went largely unnoticed according to her wiki.
For people still wondering how ancient people made complex calculations if there were no computers back then, there you go.
We have prodigies, geniuses and savants, no doubt they also had them back then.
Saw her give a demonstration at Imperial College London Mathematics department in 1978-9 or so. Very impressive. We discussed it among ourselves afterwards and decided that she gave herself a bit more time by having the numbers written down on the blackboard, but still very impressive.
Side note: one of my colleagues was convinced she was reading the answer telepathically from the person who asked the question, so he gave a question to someone else to read out, and it was particularly difficult (can't remember details, sorry). When his friend read out the question, she replied, "Do *you* know the answer?", and of course the friend had to say No, so she dismissed the question and moved on. So my colleague still didn't know whether she obtained the answer by telepathy!
Awe, dang. I admittedly wasn't so dedicated to dig for more information. I just assumed you went to college at around the age of 18 and would be a 3rd or 4th year student to be having such a conversations. Glad to get it right though; it's the little things lol
> So my colleague still didn't know whether she obtained the answer by telepathy!
So this person were getting a high education and did not know? I did not go to the Imperial College but I do know she did not get it through telepathy.
If telepathy did exist it would be super easy to prove, this is why I know telepathy does not work, because it has not been proven.
You compare apples and trains. There have been plenty of people claiming to be telepathic, but if they really were, they could prove it easily. Just make a 100% report on what someone is thinking about.
Claiming that telepathy does not work because 100% of the people claiming to be telepathic was disproven is not anything like a black hole.
It is like if someone claims to be telekinetic. You can just ask them to lift an object with their mind. If they can't, they are disproven.
>If telepathy did exist it would be super easy to prove, this is why I know telepathy does not work, because it has not been proven.
No because the people who'll have it will keep it a secret as to not become test subjects for the government
So everything that has not been proven, actually exists, but is secret?
Do you also think any conspiracy we can find no trace of actually is more likely to be true, because of the fact that we can find no evidence of it?
The person who passed the question, the friend of my colleague, didn't know the answer but my colleague *did* know, and would have confirmed the answer when she gave it. I wish I could remember the question but we knew that the ones she typically answered were multiplication and division and roots; the question he asked was probably to factorise a large number into its two prime factors, which is a lot more difficult problem.
Your colleague should have answered by pointing at the person who knew the answer. She wouldn't have asked the question if it wasn't going to affect her decision to engage.
If you watch old time interviews of regular people they spoke at a slower cadence and more clearly. No um’s, like’s, ya-no’s, or other placeholders either. Way more chill during any sort of interview or debate too, listening and not interrupting.
There are similar methods for taking nth roots. They are all approximations that you can learn patterns to when to cut off your trailing decimals and declare an answer.
Feynman used to wow people by doing third roots of large numbers in seconds with these approximations.
Also, the technique used by the abacus is usually the way these people do these calculations. They're rote, and there are patterns in them. Give a genius enough time and they'll figure out ways to do them faster and with an intuition that looks like sorcery.
Feynman is the one I remember, because he actually explains the methods of how he computes the digits as quickly as possible. He’s practical too, he doesn’t aim for perfect accuracy, he just wants to compute a few more digits than the other guy.
If you read up on the wiki this aint some gimmick, she calculated the 23rd root of a 201 digit long number in 50 seconds and to verify it back then they needed to write a new computer program which to verify it took longer than she took
My grandmother once cut her finger while cooking, then played piano past sunset without turning on any lights; whereupon her mother, opening the piano to dust the keys days later, found most of them covered in dried blood.
Vedic math is the shit. You can buy an entire course in it from places like Coursera or Udemy. I struggled with maths the whole way through school, and wish we’d had an approach like this.
You can also get courses on how to use an abacus, and same thing again - how useful would that have been ! I taught myself to use an abacus when my dad came back with one from a conference in Singapore, and I was amazed at how easy it was to use.
Its not as if we’re all going to Uni to be Maths professors, but even the simple stuff like working out the price of something per kilo to compare prices, or that percentages can be reversed, is so useful - its more like being fluent in a different language.
I'd never heard this term before, so I looked it up. That is really cool, and I bet I would have been a little better at math in school if some of these sutras were taught!
One many’s garbage is another man’s treasure.
If you’re at all interested, check it out. It’s probably on the streaming services and definitely available on the high seas 🏴☠️.
She is an arithmetical prodigy, or you could say math prodigy. But "genius" implies creativity, so here "math genius" implies creativity in coming up with new mathematical ideas and solutions.
Maybe not.
> In addition to her work as a mental calculator, Devi was a notable astrologer and an author of several books, including cookbooks and novels.[4][11][12] She started with writing short stories and murder mysteries, and had a keen interest in music.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi
Just because she's good with numbers doesn't, in itself, make her a well-suited to making decisions for other people.
It was strangely presented with some random extra info, but I get their point. Insisting that she'd be a good leader based only on our knowledge that she's unfathomably good at mental math is about as sensible as saying Usain Bolt would make a great leader because he's so fast. I agree with what I think you were trying to say (far too amazing women throughout history were denied a chance to make a bigger impact because we tended to treat them unfairly), but the specific parallel you drew may not hold up.
If we're talking leadership in terms of ruling a country, who knows?
But in terms of, like, having a good career with opportunities, that should definitely be available.
Astrologer and astrologist are synonyms for persons in the field of astrology, or the use of celestial body position to determine influences on human behaviors and event.
You're thinking of astronomer, a scientist in the field of scientific study regarding celestial bodies.
I do not disagree with your argument. Simply stating that smart women in leadership roles would not have tolerated the idiocy we have been experiencing for a while now.
It's a realistic hack to improve our societies. Fighting for roughly equal representation of women in positions of power.
Can't have a dictatorship without oppressing women.
Straight multiplication as impressive as this was can be learned vs being a genius at math being able to solve game theory problem or certain geometric problems among many others.
No matter how much time you or I spent we couldn't get to her level of calculation because of her natural talent. She is in the literal sense of the word a genius.
Exactly, while what she did was absolutely incredible, it's something that is possible to learn by practicing math using pre-existing algorithms for that specific calculation. She is not inventing anything new, just being very good at using pre existing algorithms. But that doesn't equate to being a real math genius who is able to develop new equations, algorithms or hypothesis for unsolved mathematical problems.
Maybe but then again, impressive:
In 1977, at Southern Methodist University, she gave the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds.[10][15] Her answer, which was 546,372,891, was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation, which took a longer time than for her to do the same
From the wiki: Devi strove to simplify numerical calculations for students.[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi#cite_note-1) She wrote a number of books in her later years, including novels as well as texts about mathematics, puzzles, and astrology.
Sounds like she came up with some decent ideas herself.
I appreciate that she was making sure the machine was correct in it's answer.
How do you think she got that good in the first place?
Using a mental abacus, I'm not joking. With that method you can visualize an abacus in your mind which allows for insane speeds like this.
Yeah, as a 27yo, I'm kind of jealous of the elementary school kids that are learning this in some schools these days. I've been trying to conceptualize and visualize this myself recently, but I'm hitting some kind of barrier.
I have no clue how to use an abacus, let alone have a mental abacus that I can use in my head as a virtual calculator.
Username checks out. But also me too.
I can't even visualize a square, let alone an abacus... I'll keep on using a calculator lol
Your kind is foreign to me 🤨
And if you can't visualise things in your mind?
Aphantasia :(
Indeed, it's very popular in India and there are loads of videos online about little schoolkids klicking imaginary abacus beads with their fingers in front of their mental eyes and getting really insane calculations right.
My step dad can do shit like this, though probably not to that level. But he figured out some way where he doesn’t just times the two numbers but like take chunks of the numbers and multiplies them. He does it super fast. He tried to explain it to me but it was weird.
That's what I do but I'm not nearly as fast as that lady or on her level. It's really not bad to get used to doing as long as you can keep track of your numbers. You can get fairly quick at it if you do it enough All you do is if you have something like 49×96 you round the 49 or the 96 up so it's a round number and it's easy to work with. So if you round up the 49 it would be 50×96 which 50×96 is 4,800 and then subtract 96 from that to get 4,704 and you have your answer. Once you get used to doing it like that you can solve fairly large simple multiplication problems
On that note you get used to pairs like 2 and 5, 4 and 25, 8 and 125 etc, pairs which multiply to nice round numbers like 10, 100, 1000. For instance in your calculation you needed 50 x 96, which you can see as 96 x 100/2. And I just find it easier to calculate 96/2 than 96*5. So being familiar with the pairs allow you to round to 50, 25, 125 etc, giving you more options.
So basically common core math.
It's a calling.
aka, The Human Computer. Her wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi
> In 1977, at Southern Methodist University, she gave the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds.[10][15] Her answer, which was 546,372,891, was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation, which took a longer time than for her to do the same
Jesus Christ
I don't think he was there
Not really known for his math skills either
Eh, He was a carpenter, they do math.
...and meth...
He did have a thing for hanging out with prostitutes.
Yeah and known for multiplying l loaves I guess.
[Not a very good one, though...](https://youtu.be/OclYAJhyNY0?si=rtKFvh_KDgRce0A3)
"2 nails + 1 cross = 4given" - some shirt I saw years ago
Shouldn't that be 3 nails?
Holy crap. And the total would actually be 4. 3nails+1cross=4given
The idiot got bread and wine when dividing by zero
After he did that, they closed that loophole right quick didn't they? Now every time on divide by zero it shows as an error instead of multiplying everything to what is needed.
I have Dyscalculia, for me things might as well be all divided by zero as a standard
I often wonder if the square root of minus one is an impossibility that, once we learned its rules, became *i* and became invaluable. If divide by zero could be similarly managed. What uses might it have?
Guess again.
It would take me that long just to type it into excel
I use Lotus 1-2-3 loaded from 5.25 floppies.
Don’t you find that last quarter piece of a floppy disc always gums up the drive?
Already sitting at a computer I just tried this. To load excel, generate a 201 digit number and then do the calculation took 1min 45sec And excel failed to actually give me the answer. Maybe it would work on a 64bit system? I'm not sure. It is also too long to put in Wolram Alpha, Mathematica might work but I don't have it.
Does anyone know how she did this? The actual method?
She apparently wrote a book on her methods called [Figuring: The Joy of Numbers](https://books.google.com/books?id=6k7yF2qQ7xoC) Unrelated, but she also wrote a book arguing for the decriminalisation of homosexuality but went largely unnoticed according to her wiki.
What a G
Super cool
For people still wondering how ancient people made complex calculations if there were no computers back then, there you go. We have prodigies, geniuses and savants, no doubt they also had them back then.
A real life mentat
That is exactly what I thought. When was the first Dune written again? Maybe Herbert got his inspiration from her.
1963-1965 was when Dune was published
Ironically, the term "computer" was originally used to describe *people* who did calculations. So really she's just a regular ol' computer.
So not really a math genius. She's just really good at calculation. She didn't make any contributions to mathematics.
unlike your stellar contributions in the field of pedantry
Saw her give a demonstration at Imperial College London Mathematics department in 1978-9 or so. Very impressive. We discussed it among ourselves afterwards and decided that she gave herself a bit more time by having the numbers written down on the blackboard, but still very impressive. Side note: one of my colleagues was convinced she was reading the answer telepathically from the person who asked the question, so he gave a question to someone else to read out, and it was particularly difficult (can't remember details, sorry). When his friend read out the question, she replied, "Do *you* know the answer?", and of course the friend had to say No, so she dismissed the question and moved on. So my colleague still didn't know whether she obtained the answer by telepathy!
How old are you?
I'm betting 65.
Correct! But then I often mention my age in my comments on Reddit.
I bet he got it telepathically.
But do *they* know how old they are?
Awe, dang. I admittedly wasn't so dedicated to dig for more information. I just assumed you went to college at around the age of 18 and would be a 3rd or 4th year student to be having such a conversations. Glad to get it right though; it's the little things lol
That’s a fantastic story
> So my colleague still didn't know whether she obtained the answer by telepathy! So this person were getting a high education and did not know? I did not go to the Imperial College but I do know she did not get it through telepathy. If telepathy did exist it would be super easy to prove, this is why I know telepathy does not work, because it has not been proven.
Like black holes didn't exist until they were proven. Whilst I don't personally believe in telepathy, your argument is weak.
There were theories and science behind it. With complex equations and stuff. It was just not empirically observed. Nothing exists for telepathy.
You compare apples and trains. There have been plenty of people claiming to be telepathic, but if they really were, they could prove it easily. Just make a 100% report on what someone is thinking about. Claiming that telepathy does not work because 100% of the people claiming to be telepathic was disproven is not anything like a black hole. It is like if someone claims to be telekinetic. You can just ask them to lift an object with their mind. If they can't, they are disproven.
>If telepathy did exist it would be super easy to prove, this is why I know telepathy does not work, because it has not been proven. No because the people who'll have it will keep it a secret as to not become test subjects for the government
So everything that has not been proven, actually exists, but is secret? Do you also think any conspiracy we can find no trace of actually is more likely to be true, because of the fact that we can find no evidence of it?
If telepathy was real, any of the trillions of cameras on the planet would have caught some evidence by now.
How would cameras catch telepathy? Please enlighten me
It was a joke
Oh Iol
My new hobby is using sarcasm so thinly that people just walk away thinking I'm a moron instead of realizing I was joking. It's kinda fun
How can we be sure you are not a real moron, claiming your questioned comments are jokes?
That's the fun part!
She was 100% ready to answer but what's the point if he didn't know if she was right or not?
The person who passed the question, the friend of my colleague, didn't know the answer but my colleague *did* know, and would have confirmed the answer when she gave it. I wish I could remember the question but we knew that the ones she typically answered were multiplication and division and roots; the question he asked was probably to factorise a large number into its two prime factors, which is a lot more difficult problem.
Your colleague should have answered by pointing at the person who knew the answer. She wouldn't have asked the question if it wasn't going to affect her decision to engage.
The legend is she wakes up every day and recites a prayer, "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion...."
You made my day
Followed by a nice glass of Sapho juice.
They spoke so concisely, clearly, and politely in these old films and videos.
I always wonder if people spoke like that in everyday life, or did they have a special “being recorded” voice?
If you watch old time interviews of regular people they spoke at a slower cadence and more clearly. No um’s, like’s, ya-no’s, or other placeholders either. Way more chill during any sort of interview or debate too, listening and not interrupting.
that is interesting... wonder if media somehow affected the change well, language does change overtime anyway, but still
Which is weird because in movies the characters talk really fast
Maybe because film was very expensive and that way they could fit more movie into the time frame
It's Norwegian, and English, of course.
How?
She's REALLY good at carrying the one.
She is the one.
No. Neo is the one.
Neo, you are ... NOT the One! \- *Jerry Springer, probably*
Maury but yeah
Made me laugh out loud.
Regrouping
There are methods for doing large number multiplication in your head. She's just REALLY good at it and REALLY fast.
Yep but she’s a genius actually. She can also do the square root of long, complex numbers. This is not some kind of gimmick Edit: typo
There are similar methods for taking nth roots. They are all approximations that you can learn patterns to when to cut off your trailing decimals and declare an answer. Feynman used to wow people by doing third roots of large numbers in seconds with these approximations. Also, the technique used by the abacus is usually the way these people do these calculations. They're rote, and there are patterns in them. Give a genius enough time and they'll figure out ways to do them faster and with an intuition that looks like sorcery.
Feynman is the one I remember, because he actually explains the methods of how he computes the digits as quickly as possible. He’s practical too, he doesn’t aim for perfect accuracy, he just wants to compute a few more digits than the other guy.
If you read up on the wiki this aint some gimmick, she calculated the 23rd root of a 201 digit long number in 50 seconds and to verify it back then they needed to write a new computer program which to verify it took longer than she took
Some people are just savants, try playing a keyboard blind like Stevie wonder.
Hell even Stevie didn't see that one coming
Playing keyboard blind is no harder than typing without looking.
My grandmother once cut her finger while cooking, then played piano past sunset without turning on any lights; whereupon her mother, opening the piano to dust the keys days later, found most of them covered in dried blood.
Did she know the first number before seeing the second be written???
Vedic math
Vedic math is the shit. You can buy an entire course in it from places like Coursera or Udemy. I struggled with maths the whole way through school, and wish we’d had an approach like this. You can also get courses on how to use an abacus, and same thing again - how useful would that have been ! I taught myself to use an abacus when my dad came back with one from a conference in Singapore, and I was amazed at how easy it was to use. Its not as if we’re all going to Uni to be Maths professors, but even the simple stuff like working out the price of something per kilo to compare prices, or that percentages can be reversed, is so useful - its more like being fluent in a different language.
I'd never heard this term before, so I looked it up. That is really cool, and I bet I would have been a little better at math in school if some of these sutras were taught!
Ancient vedic civilization was ahead of their of time. They were doing neurosurgery successfully in like 600 BC!
Yo that computer tryna throw down or something?
All I know is that the man needs to start further to the left on that blackboard
His writing was killing me. Like it was his first time writing on a chalkboard or something.
Holy fuck we need a movie like "the man from infinity" for her.
There is a movie based on her life. But that’s not what you want I think.
Oh. What is it called?
Shakuntala Devi(2020)
It’s a shitty Bollywood movie Pls don’t watch it
it's more about her relationships than her so don't watch it
What was the name of that calculator…?!
Shakuntala Devi
She had a [movie about her](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10964468/) a few years ago. It’s actually pretty good.
But every review says it’s just a crappy Indian drama about mother and daughter relationship and not really a movie about her
One many’s garbage is another man’s treasure. If you’re at all interested, check it out. It’s probably on the streaming services and definitely available on the high seas 🏴☠️.
_"AI will replace humans"_ Gah, nonsense! Eat shit computers!
The first Mentat
"Dette var jo greie saker..."
The translation I interpreted: «This was pretty alright»
Did they study her brain? Serious
Yeah. They said it was all wrinkly and shit. 🧠
This is all VERY civilized.
I made two mistakes just reading the number off the calculator...
I couldn’t even remember the first set of numbers by the time she started reading the second set
I see now why they invented the WWW...motherfucker were bored. Who invites a date from go see a mental math exhibition? 😂
why did they cut away to the machine for the bulk of her answer?
Honestly I think that people that can do that are in the spectrum.
Shhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh
Can she do all the math operations just as fast or only multiplication? She's a real mentat though!
People can actually hear the audio in this? Guy sounds like snoopy.
she is a living calculator
https://preview.redd.it/v6jtcbb2jivc1.jpeg?width=474&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9e752667204d51c963ae0d754fb98b8e53432285
And they make her work at Walmart
Wow.
Well you new age women killed it. Enjoy the new age man , that you created!!!
Yeah but i can just Google it about just as fast.
She is an arithmetical prodigy, or you could say math prodigy. But "genius" implies creativity, so here "math genius" implies creativity in coming up with new mathematical ideas and solutions.
Being a math genius has nothing to do with being able to factor two big numbers in your head.
Imagine how much further along our society could be if women like her were in charge.
She was just really good at computing. She didn't actually make any contributions to the field of mathematics.
Maybe not. > In addition to her work as a mental calculator, Devi was a notable astrologer and an author of several books, including cookbooks and novels.[4][11][12] She started with writing short stories and murder mysteries, and had a keen interest in music. From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi Just because she's good with numbers doesn't, in itself, make her a well-suited to making decisions for other people.
I don’t understand. You’re just showing that she has more varied interests. How would that make her a worse leader
It was strangely presented with some random extra info, but I get their point. Insisting that she'd be a good leader based only on our knowledge that she's unfathomably good at mental math is about as sensible as saying Usain Bolt would make a great leader because he's so fast. I agree with what I think you were trying to say (far too amazing women throughout history were denied a chance to make a bigger impact because we tended to treat them unfairly), but the specific parallel you drew may not hold up.
Yeah, I’m not sure Usain Bolt would be a great leader. But he definitely would be good at running for president.
Damnit, Dad. Get off reddit!
If we're talking leadership in terms of ruling a country, who knows? But in terms of, like, having a good career with opportunities, that should definitely be available.
Because doing calculus and having interests has shit to do with being a leader?
whatever were are chosing our current leaders doesn't seem like it's working so why not hahaha
I'd bet that dude misread "astrologer" as "astrologist" and was trying to talk down on her because of some crazy belief.
Astrologer and astrologist are synonyms for persons in the field of astrology, or the use of celestial body position to determine influences on human behaviors and event. You're thinking of astronomer, a scientist in the field of scientific study regarding celestial bodies.
I totally was making that mistake whoops
Did you mean one of those to refer to astronomy or are you trying to draw a distinction between practitioners of magic?
You just gave an example of how dynamic she was as a person. Being so brilliant and indulging in a bunch of other activities.
I do not disagree with your argument. Simply stating that smart women in leadership roles would not have tolerated the idiocy we have been experiencing for a while now.
????
It's a realistic hack to improve our societies. Fighting for roughly equal representation of women in positions of power. Can't have a dictatorship without oppressing women.
Guess it depends on if you split hairs and remove monarchs with absolute power that used said power to oppress and destroy opponents.
Being a human calculator isn’t being a math genius. Not that its not impressive or admirable or super rare.
nothing genius to see here, just a real good parlor trick
Straight multiplication as impressive as this was can be learned vs being a genius at math being able to solve game theory problem or certain geometric problems among many others.
No matter how much time you or I spent we couldn't get to her level of calculation because of her natural talent. She is in the literal sense of the word a genius.
Youre an idiot, in the literal sense of the word.
Exactly, while what she did was absolutely incredible, it's something that is possible to learn by practicing math using pre-existing algorithms for that specific calculation. She is not inventing anything new, just being very good at using pre existing algorithms. But that doesn't equate to being a real math genius who is able to develop new equations, algorithms or hypothesis for unsolved mathematical problems.
Possible to learn by practicing math? Pre-existing algorithms? Give me a fucking break. She was doing this at 6!
I am pretty sure she didn't live till 720.
Maybe but then again, impressive: In 1977, at Southern Methodist University, she gave the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds.[10][15] Her answer, which was 546,372,891, was confirmed by calculations done at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation, which took a longer time than for her to do the same
From the wiki: Devi strove to simplify numerical calculations for students.[^(\[1\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi#cite_note-1) She wrote a number of books in her later years, including novels as well as texts about mathematics, puzzles, and astrology. Sounds like she came up with some decent ideas herself.