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Shakuntala Devi
Where did she learn these skills?
By all accounts, Shakuntala Devi was entirely self-taught. Daughter of a circus performer, she travelled with her parents since she was three years old, and is said to have cultivated her calculating abilities while performing card tricks. Once she began to extract cube roots rapidly in her head, she became a performer exhibiting her skills. By the time she was a teenager, she was already travelling around the world, usually before audiences in colleges and universities.
Beyond her numerical skills, how much mathematics did she study?
Shakuntala Devi authored several books, including at least half a dozen on calculations, mathematical puzzles, and grooming children in mathematical skills. The books show she was familiar with certain mathematical concepts that one usually learns during a formal education. For example, in some of her writings she discusses trigonometry and logarithms. It is most likely that she learnt these concepts from extensive reading, but there is not much literature available on this aspect of her life.
Even the film does not throw any light on this. While it is full of glimpses about her extraordinary calculating abilities, the film dwells very little on the mental processes these abilities were based on.
Shakuntala Devi review: A Vidya Balan show
So, what explains her calculating abilities?
One of the most comprehensive accounts is the report on the tests at University of California-Berkeley in 1988. The psychologist Jensen, who died in 2012, published his findings in the journal Intelligence in 1990.
The short answer: Jensen could not figure out the secret of her skills: “[None] of the objective test results begins to explain why or how Devi is able to perform feats with numbers that are so far beyond what most of us can do in this sphere as to seem incredible. Her peculiar ability is indeed rare, perhaps one in hundreds of millions,” he wrote in his report.
Jensen noted a marked contrast between Shakuntala Devi’s calculating abilities and her “rather unexceptional reaction times” in elementary cognitive tasks. “Some kind of motivational factor that sustains enormous and prolonged interest and practice in a particular skill probably plays a larger part in extremely exceptional performance …,” he wrote.
Did the tests provide even a hint on the processes she followed?
In his report, Jensen speculated that most of the basic operations involved in her performance probably became automatised during her childhood. “Devi ‘perceives’ large numbers differently from the way most of us ordinarily do. When she takes in a large number (and she must do this visually), it undergoes some transformation, almost instantly — usually some kind of simplification of the number,” Jensen wrote.
By all accounts, Shakuntala Devi was entirely self-taught. Daughter of a circus performer, she travelled with her parents since she was three years old, and is said to have cultivated her calculating abilities while performing card tricks. Once she began to extract cube roots rapidly in her head, she became a performer exhibiting her skills. By the time she was a teenager, she was already travelling around the world, usually before audiences in colleges and universities.
Beyond her numerical skills, how much mathematics did she study?
Shakuntala Devi authored several books, including at least half a dozen on calculations, mathematical puzzles, and grooming children in mathematical skills. The books show she was familiar with certain mathematical concepts that one usually learns during a formal education. For example, in some of her writings she discusses trigonometry and logarithms. It is most likely that she learnt these concepts from extensive reading, but there is not much literature available on this aspect of her life.
Even the film does not throw any light on this. While it is full of glimpses about her extraordinary calculating abilities, the film dwells very little on the mental processes these abilities were based on.
Shakuntala Devi review: A Vidya Balan show
So, what explains her calculating abilities?
One of the most comprehensive accounts is the report on the tests at University of California-Berkeley in 1988. The psychologist Jensen, who died in 2012, published his findings in the journal Intelligence in 1990.
The short answer: Jensen could not figure out the secret of her skills: “[None] of the objective test results begins to explain why or how Devi is able to perform feats with numbers that are so far beyond what most of us can do in this sphere as to seem incredible. Her peculiar ability is indeed rare, perhaps one in hundreds of millions,” he wrote in his report.
Jensen noted a marked contrast between Shakuntala Devi’s calculating abilities and her “rather unexceptional reaction times” in elementary cognitive tasks. “Some kind of motivational factor that sustains enormous and prolonged interest and practice in a particular skill probably plays a larger part in extremely exceptional performance …,” he wrote.
Did the tests provide even a hint on the processes she followed?
In his report, Jensen speculated that most of the basic operations involved in her performance probably became automatised during her childhood. “Devi ‘perceives’ large numbers differently from the way most of us ordinarily do. When she takes in a large number (and she must do this visually), it undergoes some transformation, almost instantly — usually some kind of simplification of the number,” Jensen wrote.
