Mathlete's Big Number Antics
By Mark Steer
A French ‘mathlete’ has just broken his own world record for working out the 13th root of a 200 digit number. He did it in 70.2 seconds, which is considerably less time than it took me to work out what a 13th root was. The mathematical mastermind now hopes to generalise his mental processes to turn himself into a human computer.Alexis Lemaire is a PhD student studying artificial intelligence; he is also capable of extraordinary mental gymnastics. Somehow he is capable of taking a randomly generated number, 200 digits long and working out its 13th root – that’s the number that can be multiplied by itself 13 times to give the original answer.
According to reports, the 27-year-old arrived at his answer - 2,407,899,893,032,210 - via a "great deal of brow-furrowing and lip-chewing". But he beat his previous best time by 2.2 seconds and earned himself a place in the Guinness Book of Records. We think that this means the number he started with was something along the lines of 914743972814745… oh what’s the point there’s another 185 numbers to go.
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| The human computer |
"My ambition is to generalise these abilities to many brain processes, to run something like a computer programme in my head which I can use for any task.” He said, whilst probably flicking through a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. "If I run a computer programme all the time in my head, it should be possible to download it to a computer programme and that leads to mind-uploading. This would mean the computer would have all the same skills as me. I think it is possible."
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Title image: theRIAA
Main Image: AFP - Don Emmert
Main Image: AFP - Don Emmert
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