[Sorry for the topic spam, I’ve accumulated a list of thread ideas in my wallet for awhile and just now feel like spewing them out]
Known any of those people who can do complex math problems in their heads in 2 seconds? Count blackjack cards flawlessly over hundreds of deals? Recite pi to 1,000 or more decimal places? Photographic memory might fit here too.
There was a fellow in my parents’ synagogue who was mildly retarded, but brilliant with the calendar. He was someone who could tell you, after a moment’s thought, what day of the week it’d be on July 12, 3097, and what the date would be on the Hebrew calendar as well. (It’s a Monday, and the ninth of Tammuz, FWIW, but I had to look it up.) He was a quiet, gentle person who did some sort of low-level job for the postal service until he retired; he passed away suddenly last year.
When I was a housemom in a half-way house for mentally ill/chemically dependent people I met a young man with alcoholism and schizophrenia who corresponded with a number of people around the world playing chess by postcard.
Some days he was so heavily medicated that he would sit at the dinner table and stare for a long time at his silverware in apparent confusion about how to use them. Always looked like he was in a daze, indifferent to his surroundings.
One day I asked him where he had his chess boards set up and he answered that he presently had seven games going with his correspondents and he kept all the information in his head.
Staff verified that he usually won.
My mom isn’t really a savant, but I’ve never known anybody who can remember numbers like she can. Especially phone numbers. She never writes down call numbers in the library, either. (I’m a librarian and I forget what number I’m looking for three or four times on my way to the stacks.)
I used to know a guy who could tell you what the weather was on any day in the past 30 or 40 years. And if you mentioned a US city to him, he’d tell you all of the local radio stations there, and what kind of music they played.
One of my best friends used to work with mentally handicapped folks and he knew one of the guys who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s character in “Rain Man”. IIRC it was Ned Christopher (William Christopher of MASH fame is his dad).
My dad’s cousin is a doctor and has a near-photographic memory. Astounding recall, was obviously quite handy in med school.
One of my coworkers is famous for knowing the phone numbers of everyone in the office (we have about 900 people here). He never has to look in the staff directory, he’s just got them memorized. He was explaining how it works one day - he just “sees” a phone book in his head.
My college roommate has an adopted brother who was a musical prodigy - at an early age they discovered that if he heard a song one time he could sit down and play it on the piano. Normal bratty teenager aside from that 
Ex-g/f could do the universal calendar trick in her head. Not instantly, but she knew a few key dates and could do the mental math for any other date pretty well.
As an aside, I learned how to impress people at a party with the calendar routine: Someone says “March 19th, 1939” and you say “Tuesday” after a few seconds thought. The secret? Lie with great authority. Virtually nobody really knows what day of the week some random date is or was. Few people have any idea what day of the week they were born. So you just stare off into the distance like you’re doing some great mental arithmetic and then pick a day at random. 99% of people will buy it. One trick, if you are given the 13th of any month, say “Friday”. There’s always somebody who knows something that happened on a Friday the 13th and that’s what they’ll throw at you but aside from that nobody ever checks.
I’m decent at mental math - in engineering school I got good at quick approximations that’d get me in the right ballpark and I can always adjust to get closer to the exact answer. Nowhere near the level of folks who can extract multiple roots of 20 digit numbers or anything but I don’t need to pick up a calculator for everyday math.
You too, can be an idiot savant (at least with calendars.) The well-known mathematician, writer, and perv Lewis Carroll invented a different method, but I think this one’s easier.
I’ve never tested him on it, but I’m told an autistic guy I’ve met a few times has all the major train schedules in the US memorized. You name a train, he knows exactly where it is (or at least where it’s supposed to be).
My cousin’s husband knew every single major-league baseball statistic, from the beginning of the sport up to last night’s games. People were always testing him, and he ***always ***knew the right answer.
Other than that, the man had a severe learning disability. He was totally ignorant of even basic things that everyone else knew. But get him talking about baseball, and you’d never know he was at all deficient (except for his speech impediment).
Of course, everyone referred to him as “Rain Man.”
I’ve met a man who could take a sheet of black construction paper and, using only tears and folds, create a perfect silhouette of any object or person within his sight within a few minutes. In fact, he did one of my sister when she was around 5.
I don’t know how far his powers extend, but I have a class with this guy that has Asperger’s and he has a really remarkable memory for dates (well everything really, he’s like a walking encyclopedia, but he seems especially good with dates and numbers). It’s a film class, and you can ask him what year any movie came out and he’ll tell you instantly (and be right). Pretty awesome.
That would probably work with the weather routine too. Who’s gonna go to the trouble to find an old weather report?
Where I worked there was a savant that knew everyone in the plants 4 digit badge number. There were over a thousand people which made it pretty impressive. He also knew every fact associated with rock and roll bands. He knew every song they wrote by name and year and old and new band members. He knew if they had died and how they died.
14 posts and nobody has claimed themselves? What happened to the Straight Dope that I know and love with people who were reading Chomsky while solving Fermat’s last theorem in their Father’s testicles???
I had a guy (mid 30’s) that washed dishes for me at a restaurant I managed. He had been there ever since the store opened, when there was a program from the state to get mentally challenged people in the workplace. Eventually the money ran out for the program, and he was let go. However, he did not agree with this, and continued to work anyway. In fact, due to a management change at the same time, he apparently ended up working for a couple of weeks without pay or being on the books. Long story short, he loves the restaurant, and washing dishes (which he did extremely well).
His thing was counting- No complex math or anything- just counting. Really fast. With really large quantities. We could take shredded cheese, toss a handful in the air, and he could count the shreds before they hit the ground. I am not kidding. One of the more amazing things I have ever seen. There were rules to this of course- Whatever he was counting had to be able to be seen all at once, so if the shreds were all stuck together, then it was a no-go.
It was like he could take a picture with his mind and then count the objects in less than a second. I used him several times to count change at the end of shift. Spread pennies around on the desk, call him in, he glances down, looks back up at me and says, “244”. Wash, rinse, and repeat with other denominations.
He couldn’t write his name.
Just remembered . . . In one place I worked, the guard at the main entrance collected bus schedules from every town in the country. And as soon as he got a new one, he sat there and memorized it. And he never forgot anything.
I love this anecdote. Brains is weird.