The Official World Education Games Blog

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On the 1st of February 2012 years 5 and 6 at Colston’s Primary in the UK, had a visit from Scott Flansburg or as he’s more commonly known, The Human Calculator. When he came into the hall after lunch, Eve his travelling companion talked about World Maths Day and what other events were happening this year. We suggested the Olympics and then Eve asked us what athletes do to take part in the Olympics. “Do they just turn up one day and run?” she asked, I said they had to train or practice.

That brought us on nicely to Scott’s welcoming because he was hiding in our classroom waiting for Eve’s introduction to finish; then she signalled for him come in to the hall and introduce himself to us. He said that as well as warming up for sport and other activities we also need to warm up our brains as well, so I put my hand up and he said first hand up will help me warm up my brain, that was me so he asked if I could give him 5 two digit numbers so I gave numbers like 67+26+58+96+58= and Eve sat down on his iPad and put the calculator app on and typed in the numbers as we went along and before Eve could press enter he shouted out the answer right after I said the 5 numbers. So we did that a couple of times until he came onto another subject for maths.

He talked about the 11 times table and how easy it was. He said if you do the 11 times table up to 10 times it wasn’t actually maths at all, it was just memory. He said to really do maths for the 11 times table you need to have a method. For example: 45 times 11, first you move the 4 and the 5 to the bottom of your answer staying at the end it came from, then you plus the 4 and the five together which equals 9 so your answer should be 495 if I remember it correctly that is how it should go.

After an amazing and inspiring talk about that, Scott talked about something that puzzled me for a long time, why do numbers look the way they do? Why the odd shapes? Scott said it took him about 30 years to figure it out but if you look at the number 0 it has 0 angles and 1 it isn’t just one straight line, it’s got the little flick at the top to give it 1 angle. We did that up to nine and by then we were all completely star struck.

We were sort of coming off mental maths and coming on to the subject of World Maths Day, World Spelling Day and World Science Day. We were all given cards saying Date of Birth a box underneath it and again Date of Birth with Monday to Sunday written at the Bottom then we were given pencils and we went up to Scott Flansburg and he could tell you what day your Birthday was when you have written down your Date of Birth.

I would like to say well done to Scott Flansburg and for Mathletics for being the best math experts in the world.

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