I gotcha. About a 100 washers or screws or whatever. But does not work in competition when one point is a win, or a lose.
A twist on this is
He doesn’t actully count at all: each number seems to be a separate thing for him.
Oh my. That would be horrific. Sort of like eidetic memory, but it doesn’t last for ever. That’s why I take a picture of everything I take apart.
And all the bits that go ‘ping’; into the corners, as Terry Pratchett said.
It’s always a bit worrying when you you put it all back together and it seems to be working… but there are a few bits left over. Oh well, maybe we didn’t really need those parts anyway?
Like Madman Muntz…
I used to go shopping for my elderly mother. I would take pictures of the stuff she wanted. I had to be exact.
So, I have some very strange pictures on my phone. “Why do you have a picture of whipped Kroger brand cream cheese on your phone?”
Uh. “Same reason I have pictures of feminine hygiene products on my phone” I suppose I should delete that stuff.
I look at it and say 2 x 19^2 = 2 x 361 =722. I know all the squares up to 30, so I get it instantly. I once saw a graduates student in mathematics pull out a calculator when asked 8 x 75. I automatically reorganize it as 3/4 of 800, but even if I didn’t I could double 75 three times instantly.
One sleepless night we were staying at a beach house whose number was 1763 and I decided to try an see if that number was prime. Since its square root was obviously in the low 40s it looked like I was going to have to check divisibility by all the primes up to 41. I should have started with 41. But I proceeded as follows. It was obviously not divisible by 2,3,or 5. What about 7? Well if 1763 was divisible by 7, so was 1770 and so was 177 and so was 100. Next try 11. There is a well known test for divisibility by 11 and it wasn’t. 13? well then so would 1750 and therefore 175 = 7 x 25. Nope. 17? Then 1770 and then 177 = 17 x 10 + 7. Using such tricks it is was not divisible by 19, 23, 29, 31, 37 and I was convinced my number was prime, but I still thought I should check 41. Oops. 1763 = 41 x 43, a product of a pair of twin primes. Had I known more squares I would have recognized instantly that 1764 = 42^2 from which the factorization is immediate.
But I also try to makes groups of 10 when adding a few 1, 2, or 3 digit numbers.
'Zactly. It’s often far easier to reorganize the problem and solve the simple version. Or re-org it into something that you know by inspection, needing no calcs at all.
Which seems to be the distinction between our OP & his wife. Some folks have the aptitude to do that at all, plus varying skill at it. Others simply don’t, full stop. You’re clearly a whiz, and that’s no surprise given your occupation.
I recall my first college calculus instructor making the side comment “The best math magician is the best mathematician” as he was wildly rearranging some equation into a readily solvable canonical form. It’s not strictly true of course, but a like a magician’s sleight of hand, knowing lots of little tricks and how to see how they string together to start here and end up over there is hugely valuable. And harnesses our brains’ excellent pattern-matching apparatus rather than it’s kinda clunky and slow arithmetic apparatus.
My family’s counting (or adding) game is dominos. You score if the number of dots on the ends of all the dominos are a multiple of five.
So there are usually 4–but can be up to 8– numbers between zero and twelve to add up. I’m pretty sure I’ve played with double sixteen dominos, for extra fun, but mostly double twelve is sufficient.
I like to add things like 12 and 8– you know, make tens or twenties, then worry about the leftovers.
I’m pretty sure one family member preferred to go around the table adding each end in sequence.
And we might well have had a family member who preferred to start by adding up whichever number was on the most ends, and then add other things to it.
Plus, if you know that the ends when Susie played added up to fifteen– it’s really easy to look at Mark’s domino and see whether the total is going up or down, and by how much, and not re-add the whole table.
I don’t always have an inner dialogue, but one exception is when counting. But even in my mind, the “forties” through the “seventies” are hard to say quickly and are easy to get confused. So if I am counting up from 1, I go back to 1 once I reach forty and then remember how many forties I’ve counted. If I’m doing lots of tiny amounts of addition or subtraction in my head that involves those numbers, I picture a monitor or chalkboard with the numbers and either have it flip to the new number immediately or even visualize the actual symbols for the whole board, so I won’t have to rely on my inner dialogue.
Thanks everyone. This has been interesting. And keep them coming. Games made me discover that my wife and I are a bit different when it comes to this stuff. Didn’t come as a surprise really, but the first epiphany was our careers. Interestingly we work for the same county gov. And our departments work very closely with each other. But while it’s all ‘data’ our jobs are wildly differnet.
I’m terrible at the basic skill of “times tables”. I just refused to learn by rote. I mean, let us not talk about log tables
I mean x 2 is easy but my 7 year old head worked out an algorithm so I could calculate what 7 x 8 was, based on the fact that I knew 6 x 7. 7 x 8 is based of that.
The easier ones, the 10, and 11 times tables stuck, but if you ask me today, what is 6 x7 is, the only reason is because it’s the answer to life, the universe and everything.
I mastered differential calculus, without the most basic math imaginable, got a high grade senior high school certificate… and… I still use my fingers and my childhood algorithms to do basic math.
I can do integration and differential equations on an a complex equation.
But just, I dont know, ask me 6 x 8… I need to to do mental arithmetic.
I played darts for a long time (Multiple Championship Winner, Baby!) and got pretty good keeping score for other players without holding up the game, but calculating 3-dart outs was always a challenge. We always had a chart on the wall and I had a pocket chart I kept with me.
I haven’t competed in a while now, and it’s amazing how quickly the math skills atrophied. The stoopid plastic tip boards keep a running score, so you don’t even need to really think anymore much beyond multiplying by two (for the Double Out).
I have played for a long time too. Never in a league though (congrats on the multiple winning!). I also found out something else about my wife that I never knew. She was on some sort of team in her early 20’s. She had a handicap (Like golf I guess, I have zero idea what that means in either golf or darts).
My cousin worked at a bar where a tournament was playing. One player deliberately threw a dart in her back to get her attention to get a drink. The entire team got thrown out the door. Hopefully to the pavement.
I think I know what you mean. My wife retired a week ago. I have ~30 more days. I think that chess, cribbage and darts will keep us sharper as we age. All good games for both numbers and strategic thinking. Oh, I also bought a piano. That’s gonna be rough, but we are gonna give it a go. Cousin mentioned here is very, very good, so this is a little bit for her. My Wife used to play clarinet and I failed pretty bad with both banjo and 6 string guitar. Eh, I’ll give it a shot.
I absolutely refuse to play on those. I have suggested to my wife that she wear shoes when playing. She will drop one, or one will bounce and it may be a bit of a surprise. Steel darts all the way.
I’m with you. I played a few pick-up Tournaments on soft-tip. Whole different game. And you need a lot of quarters.
I’ve got both boards at home. I’ll throw steel, then punch the soft board with my finger to keep score. Damn, I’m lazy!
I bought a set up for my wife and I. The board and two swing out doors to keep score. Not chalk, dry erase. White on black.
And we have this odd mirror in the wet bar area. It’s quite large 3x7 feet. We can keep score on that too.
Very strange. So I repurposed it and use dry erase markers on the mirror. We just write sayings and things that come to mind on there. My favorite is from my wife, being all serious, she said - “I was thinking, and then I thought, oh, whatever” Mine is from the movie American Beauty - “It’s a wonderful thing when you discover you can still surprise yourself”.
My boards are on unfinished sheetrock. I’ll note dates and memorable games. My favorite is “Ton-80 while holding a Baby”
When I was a football ref, I had to count players on each play. Sometimes the offense, sometimes the defense, depending on my assigned job on the referee squad. Offense was usually straightforward - 5-5-1: five linemen, five eligibles, and the quarterback. You had to track those for other reasons anyway.
Defense was a pain. They’re more spread out and don’t have any formation rules. 4-3-4 usually worked, but sometimes you had to adjust based on what the team did.
Actually the mathematician Persi Diaconis started his career as a magician, then switched. One trick he showed me was the ability to toss a coin that was apparently flipping in mid-air (but wasn’t really) to have it always come down heads.