Dr. Oliver Sack’s the noted neurologist/author wrote an essay featured in his book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat,” that told the story of his encounter with a pair of idiot savant twins who played this number game for hours on end. They would sit across from each other and play something akin to “number tennis.” One of them would say a number that would have some “meaning” to the other. The brother would in turn respond with another number and the other would be wowed with his number volley. This would go on for hours and the twins did it all the time. One day as Dr. Sacks was trying to figure out what they were communicating about he stumbled on quite an interesting revelation. That all the numbers that the twins volleyed back and forth were primes. The most interesting aspect though was that another prime was a “good return” for the previous one. If I remember correctly they never figured out what the algorithm for meaning was. I wonder if any of you math wizards could figure out what kind of numerical one-ups-man-ship game could be ringed from the mystery of primes.
I’m expecting my first kid (haven’t I mentioned that? ;)), and I’m becoming more and more enthralled by the stunningly powerful learning machine that’s forming in my wife’s womb. I mean… how many trillions of synapses? My kid’s like a Pentium 5000! Far out…
Maths and its capacity to be inherent in biological lifeforms, while remaining the fundamental concept for everything from poker to space travel, has always fascinated me. I asked some guys on a way deep maths thread how to get into this stuff and they advised me to start with geometry, which I will do as soon as I have the brainspace. I’m going to make sure the kid pays attention in school. This stuff is too cool to miss.
If I recall correctly, Dr. Sacks sort of came to the conclusion that what was so entertaining to them was coming up with bigger and bigger primes. The bigger the primes got the more thought required to come up with them, so the bigger (and more satisfying) the accomplishment. The way i remember it, he found a table of larger primes than what they had come up with and threw a couple out, and the twins were extremely pleased. There was a scene described where they were sort of huddled together, excluding him, and when he coughed up the big numbers, they pondered for a bit, then smiled and backed up a little to include him in their circle.
Thanks galt, that book is in my basement and I never remember such a happy ending. Sort of blows the mystery though 