Re-Learning Math with Scott Flansburg, the Human Calculator (Part 1)

thank you very much grab a seat how you guys doing who hates math raise your hand good good to know where you are who loves math raise your hand and who's sort of in the middle and could care less about math okay that's all right because we're gonna try to tip you the other way all right like Jim said my name is Scott Flensburg I'm in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest human calculator and so I'm gonna do a demonstration for you in a minute but the most time we're gonna spend today is on you it's not about me I have a gift and I want to share it with you but I believe the most important time we can share today is making sure that you can leave here doing something that you never thought you could do to truly in caps encapsulate that superhero feeling and so to get started it is James in the bag come on up James everybody give James hey he's gonna run the calculator for us we have a calculator okay so I have to get started I am NOT an athlete I'm a mathlete all right all of you athletes know that you have to stretch out your body first and warm up but as a mathlete I have to warm up my brain first so we're gonna do some basic stuff and then try harder stuff as we go but I'll need some volunteers to pick some numbers so we need some really heavy voices probably to be able to have everybody here so I don't have a volunteer anybody I need okay and start right in the front what's your name Anton so let's start off with addition all right let's do two-digit numbers to get started so you'll say like seventy-three I'll say plus you say another two-digit number I'll say plus back and forth we're gonna go I'm gonna try to add them up in my head he's gonna do it on the calculator I have screens all around me so it's very easy to cheat I do not want to cheat I don't need to cheat so I will close my eye so I'm gonna go away over here next to James so I can't see these screens I'll be over here there's nothing personal against that side of the room I just want to make sure I'm not cheating so Anton you ready we've got a zero on the board right where's our calculators we got a zero okay I'll close my eyes you're gonna say a number I'll say Plus back and forth we go you ready okay loud and clear ready go ahead plus plus plus plus plus plus one more 3:54 yeah all right good job Anton thank you very much thank you now I'm just curious how many of you can do that remember your reaction to me asking you that most you started laughing out loud some of you totally dismissed it but I promise you every one of you in this room can do what I just did adding up a bunch of two-digit numbers in my head with no pencil no paper I figured out how to do that when I was 9 years old so I'll share it with you and it's real easy all right but let's keep moving forward you need another volunteer somebody's strong voice please you want to try it you got to shout it out okay what's your name Kate Kate let's do a little more addition please let's try three-digit numbers all right so I'll move over here James ready to go so you say three-digit number Plus back and forth we go from ready when you are I don't have to shout awesome three five six just say it normal like a human 356 plus 120 sorry 123 56 plus 120 Plus 742 Plus 893 plus 567 one more 129 2797 oh I think you guys typed it in wrong just so you know all right let's just check oh we can look at the numbers will rewind the tape all right but I promise you I can usually do this very well all right now let's try one more I need one more volunteer please somebody else with a microphone okay yeah stay in the same table thank you all right let's try one more three-digit or I just want to make sure I'm still warming up go ahead 392 plus 6 81 plus 9 16 plus 243 see it's the calculator isn't it ah see the heck we don't have to do any more unredeemed all right so let's move on let's try something tougher we'll try a multiplication all right let's clear the calculator James thanks buddy you're making me look good don't worry about it all right when I strike multiplication all right let's try 2 2 numbers and I want to multiply them together while he does it on there 96 times 74 that's 296 seven 104 right seven 104 let's try another one Khan get faster as we go it's alright 83 I'll do that 83 three times 91 that's seven five five three right yeah all right and I'm not memorizing this I'm calculating I promise you all right let's try one more volunteer please somebody close to him if you don't mind just to keep it logistically easy oh hi how are you doing well thank you what's your name Tim rice okay let's try let's try something tougher what do we do there that's too easy right cuz you can even do that right let's try a division all right let's do three-digit divided by a one-digit you use weird numbers so we'll get some decimals and stuff all right so three digit by one digit 337 divided by 567 point four those are easy let's try another one come on make it tough okay 982 982 divided by seven 140 point two eight five seven one four two eight five seven one four two eight five seven right all right okay got it done we're good good job all right thank you all right so I guess I'm warmed up now and who has a calculator and right in front of them real handy oh if you just I only need one or two James is gonna do this but I could cheat because there's too many screens but if you have a calculator or an iPhone or you know you want to do this go ahead I usually do square roots but square roots are really easy people memorize square roots it's easy to figure those so we're gonna try cube roots a little bit tougher all right so on your calculator clear the calculator and James you do this to I won't look all right everybody punch in like a crazy two-digit number to get started and then hit the x key and then hit the same two-digit number again and hit the x key and hit the same two-digit number again and hit equals so you should get a big answer on your screen right so everybody that did that you got it and you don't have an e on your screen tell me the answer you came up with and what I'll do is extract the cube root out of that number you see what I mean all right so James would you come up with 47 yeah use 47 all right let's try another one come on who else yet loud and clear please 99 okay let's try a tougher one all the way in the back I missed the first one really really 23 I think yeah yeah it's one of my favorites let's try another one come on somebody else somebody else get one way in the bag go ahead 25 yeah let's try one more 82 yeah that's your I graduated high school almost go ahead 328 509 is 69 very good all right one more anybody else got tough one yeah one more 77 right yeah he tried my nemesis number that's good all right so so now I can do numbers in my head right you believe me I'm a human calculator I have this superpower since I was nine years old when I was 11 my buddy had a calculator his name's Andrew McKay I always give them credit because your friends ask you the best questions sometimes it opened up windows and opportunities in your life that you never would have found yourself with all these blind spots Andrew happen to ask me a great question at the right moment on a calculator that he had punch in 5 + 5 please James and you should get 10 right so now if James hits equals one more time what will the calculator say I heard three different answers I heard 10 15 and 20 which one do you think it is it's 15 go ahead James hit equals and keep hitting equals get a nice little rhythm and just show them how calculator counts by a number this is called a constant my buddy had a calculator he's like Scott we know you can do all these basic addition subtraction multiplication division can you do this our calculator is counting by a number I'm just kidding equal so he did 28 plus 28 equals and you started hitting equals and it wanted me to add 28 over and over again and it was like a sense awoke in my brain I'll never forget it was in front of mr. Murphy's class remember everything about it and I'm sitting there in his 2856 84 it just started making sense to me and so I want to demonstrate that for you first all right so somebody over here please pick a two-digit number you'd like me to count by good number 27 plus 27 equals and you'll see that my brain gets going faster and faster all right so tell me when you ready James you ready to rock and roll okay so 27 plus 27 is 54 81 one zero eight one three five one six two one eight nine two one six two four three two seven zero two nine seven three two four three five one three seven eight four oh five four three two four five nine four eight six five one three five four zero five six seven five nine four six two one six four six seven five seven oh two seven two nine seven five six seven eight three eight one zero eight three 76 forty nine one nine one eight nine four five nine seven two nine nine nine yada yada yada like that oh three more three more two one more yeah there you are James good job 99 all right so that's my gift that I discovered when I was very young and everybody's like you know what he do with that you didn't nobody know what to do with me my teacher thought I was an alien they don't you know no one's talked to me so it's just a gift nobody had to do with it well I got very blessed a friend of mine in Los Angeles his name's Eric Schatz he has a company called l m n o productions and i did a show for them a long time ago called how they do that and it's all about networking you know it amazes me because years later Eric got the rights to Guinness World Records TV show in America and he called me up as a friend and said Scott what can we do with you to get you into the Guinness Book World Records to get on the TV show and then we talked about it I said you know there's just one thing I can do this counting by a number there he goes yeah that's pretty crazy let's see if we can do that so here's the contest they set up they found the fastest accountant in the world that can run a ten key calculator to race me counting by a number so the judge chose the number 38 so I had to add 38 plus 38 plus 38 out loud as fast as I could racing this guy on a calculator doing 3/8 plus 3/8 plus 3/8 plus sir as fast as he could at the end of the 15 seconds he had 28 answers and I had 35 so actually beat the Machine by seven since then I've been invited to break that world record and London on TV there I did it with 36 and in Japan I got 237 answers in 15 seconds so I want to demonstrate for you what it sounds like when I'm going full-speed because that first example you can tell I was slow medium fast and then I go crazy that's what I'm just gonna go crazy all right so sir would you pick a two-digit number 72 I like that all right so 72 plus 72 this time gonna try to go full speed if anybody has a clock if you have 15 seconds anybody who's got a watch clock anybody who's gonna be a timer come on the iPhone has timers you guys know that all right we have one so when I say 72 you just start 15 second clock and when I finish just say stop or shut up or whatever you want all right you ready okay we're doing 72 right ready James you got it okay I'm ready to go 7 2 1 4 4 2 1 6 2 8 8 3 6 0 4 3 2 5 before five seven six six four seven two zero seven nine two eight four nine three six one zero zero eight one zero zero one one five two one two two four two nine six one three six eight one four four zero five one two and five a four one six five six one seven two eight one eight hundred one eight seven two one nine four four 2016-2018 one six zero two two three three two three or four two three seven six three four four eight two four four eight let's see well that's divided by 72 you should have thirty four something like that I don't know that should be 35 go ahead divided by 72 that'll be 35 answers so 34 so you can see how fast I have to everything has to be perfect to get to 37 so thank you very much and what I didn't get to do on that show that I'd love to do now is it was so funny we did this and I beat the calculator the judge comes over and he says Scott you're in the Guinness Book of World Records and I don't know I don't know why but if you go to a public school and you open up the library and you look in the library the Guinness Book World Records is and every school kids are fascinated by this book when I go to schools and kids introduce me by opening up the Guinness Book World Records and reading your world record all the other kids in the room it changes everything it's an amazing thing to be in the Guinness Book World Records it's really an honor that didn't realize how much energy would have in my mission but what was funny was good to the commercial break and the judge said Scott you beat the machine you're in the book he goes but we think you're cheating I was like how do you cheat counting by 72 he goes well we think maybe you've just memorized all these numbers here we are at Jim quicks memory class right I mean you could memorize this stuff Jim if Jim just took a month off you could memorize all the answers and count by 72 - pretty fast and I said but that's not what I do first off I think calculating is faster than men Murr is a ssin I can beat any memorization person on the planet Earth with calculation I believe our minds calculate faster than they retrieve memory memories second place okay but what I'm going to demonstrate for you is that I'm not memorizing this that I can count by any number all right so let's go to this table over here sir would you pick let's live on the edge calculator always starts at zero so they thought I memorized every number starting at zero I said what if I could just count by starting at any number then count by seventy-two they said all right that would prove to us you're not remember Jim you would agree that's tough to memorize every number for every number right full-time job all right so pick a three digit numbers our new zero for this example prime number almost 291 times three and 97 times nine but it's good number 873 hold it against you all right so I just kidding so 873 now I promise you have never done this pattern before I don't even know he's gonna say next but I've never practiced starting at age 73 so he had Plus now what two digit number you want me to count by starting at 873 so you're ready to go James you got eight ninety nine nine two five nine five one nine seven seven one zero zero three one zero two nine one zero five five one zero eight one one 107 one one three three one one five nine one one 85 one two one one one two three seven one two six three one two eight nine one three one five one three four one one three six seven one three ninety three one for my nine one four four five one four seven yada-yada-yada it just keeps going my brain is wired like a calculator alright so thank you uh so I am not memorizing I'm calculating so today I want to show you that each one of you have a calculator in your brain I'm very honored to be on a show right now called superheroes with Stan Lee an amazing thing I just got back from Scandinavia kids every kid has watched that show over there on the discovery or the History Channel it's an amazing vehicle it's really an honor to be considered a superhuman right I mean you know it's very rare and it to be on that show is one thing but one of the things I just want to show you real quick is this before you go James alright coz easier if you're here is that okay we'll do this one alright so I have a gift to be the human calendar as well I can calculate dates alright so you can give me any date in history and I can figure out what day of the week it was on alright so do we have any people remember like kids birthday a wedding something like that okay way in the back just start with month/day/year Wednesday about 3:30 just kidding all the time but 66 wins there right way to stay there you go alright come on it's tougher dates yep October 2nd 47 right Thursday you're born on a Thursday let's see if he can get there should be dude see House computers are so slow right there there you go was that wood October 2nd I think he said 46 didn't he what did you say 47 I said it right anyway I got a lot of lucky guess yeah go ahead Anton go ahead Oh a future day will be a Thursday it's almost Friday the 13th but not quite I think I don't know I'm just guessing at this point I just hoped James makes me looking at Kim on James Thursday all right good job buddy all right so I can calculate any day of the week and figure out what day of the week it was on it seems like a different type of trick like what purpose would that serve but it played a big role in my life and so I want to share that with you next but first can we give James a big hand for helping out buddy thank you about it great job there a good senior person all right I'll see out all right so now we're gonna think like a calculator to show you all these things that I've done and that I said I could teach you how to do there's a couple things I want to show you and we're gonna start with this app on the iPad it's called white board Pro let me make sure that it's uh see it works it's just a little tricky all right so here we go everybody take a look at this I'm gonna write something down that you all did when you're about nine years old our teacher made us write these 10 numbers across the page and I'll never forget this day it was in 4th grade I was 9 years old and our teacher wrote down 0 through 9 and I was uh I was not a good student I was more of a troublemaker and bored and you know just trying to fill the time and for some reason I stopped my teacher and I said hey wait a minute who picked those shapes why does the Ford look like that why does the 7 look what does the 3 look like the 2 who picked those shapes why did they pick those shapes and my teacher looked at me like wow you know I've never even thought about that I don't know the answer that she has some math friends they didn't know the answer to it we started asking more people nobody could tell me the answer I was like how it was it we're using these and nobody can even tell me where they came from or why they look like they do so it's taken me about 30 years I've searched the world and what I want to do is first introduce to you what I call chapter zero I believe it's the missing chapter in math that if we would all learn what you're about to learn now first it would give every kid on our planet a chance to really understand math but we what we start off wrong here's first office look at how many numbers are up there how many numbers did I write down 10 is there a 10 on there anywhere no so when you turn on a calculator look at this calculator how many buttons have numbers on that machine there's 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 there's no 10 on a calculator but here's what we do to kids and you guys have all done this your whole life as we confuse people because here's what we do the human body has 10 fingers we've all learned to do this 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 that's indoctrinated in our brain it is everywhere and this is what's confusing us because when you turn on a calculator it always starts at 0 the only reason the calculator works is because it starts at 0 so if you want to turn on your calculator you have to start at 0 so watch this 10 fingers 10 digits 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 it's really 0 through 9 no magic it's just thinking like a calculator so everybody please take your hands put them up in the air shake out that 1 through 10 bunch of crazy Romans did that to us close your fist and now start with 0 the first finger you ready 0 so now you're all thinking like a calculator zero through nine so I can share with you the different things that happened to me that allowed me to have this sense of numbers I guess but look at the shapes up here I asked my teacher where'd the shades come from they didn't know I found the answer I think the inventors of this language we're fighting the Roman numerals the Roman numerals were the biggest number system in the world the Roman Empire was managing the world basically and so Roman numerals were what we're trusted your finances were done in Roman numerals everything in society was done in Roman numerals they were trusted this was like magic this was this new invention this new language of numbers so nobody trusted them so they were doing everything they could to make this as easy as possible to teach they came up with a brilliant idea the shapes were meant to be able to communicate to you the value of each shape by how many angles are in the shape so it looked a little bit differently the zero is a circle how many angles in a circle zero so when you look at that shape you know there's a value of zero the number one started out a little bit differently it started like that and this shape gives you one angle right there so everybody knew that shape had a value of 1 the number 2 started out like our letter Z and this shape gives you one two angles so everybody knew that shape had a value of two the number three started out like a hieroglyph looked like that this shape gives you one two three angles 3 corners so everybody knew that I had a value of 3 the number 4 looked a little differently it started out like this and this shape gives you 1 2 oh let me go back here to - 1 2 3 4 angles see how that works pretty easy right I mean it makes sense when you started thinking about it 5 was tough they had to put a tail on it this gives you 1 2 3 4 5 angles 5 corners 6 was really easy they just put a box on it looked like that this shape will give you 1 2 three four five six corners six angles and when I'm doing shows in schools it's always funny because the kids don't care about anything till they get to seven so like how you gonna get seven angles out of that but somebody really brilliant came up with this they added two lines this gives you one two three four five six seven isn't that so simple right but who took me we're gonna take me like centuries to figure that out and now eight eight was easiest one it's just an hourglass one two three four five six seven eight all right and nine was the tough one they called this one the ugly duckling looked pretty bad but it got the job done that's nine angles right there one two three four five six seven eight nine so why don't we learn that in like third grade everybody should know that I just seemed so cool when I showed us the students they feel connected to numbers they feel like they know something they didn't know before it makes them feel like numbers they could understand a better might be their friend so this is what was happened to me in fourth grade everybody got that cool easy right okay so now let's go back to the numbers again zero through nine and now same day our teacher now wants us to write down these ten numbers again and this time we have to spell them so in your head spell each number zero zer o1 o ne and so on what number up there when you spell it has the same number of letters as its number value for four is spelled F oh you are maybe it's because I was in fourth grade I was fascinated on the number four and fourth grade maybe but I was writing down these answers and I noticed that four had four letters and I was just so excited I ran up to my teacher I was like this is incredible four has four letters and she's like what's wrong with you Scott who cares the four has four letters I said it's really cool because no other number does that zero doesn't have zero letters one doesn't have one letter seven doesn't have seven letters the only number in English that has the same number of letters as its number value is the number four I was so intrigued by that and that's what made me notice the next thing is take a look at the numbers up here which numbers up here when you spell them use 4 letters say it when you see them I heard five what else zero that's the one people usually miss there's another one I heard it nine so we have zero four five and nine are all four-letter words and maybe you noticed how many numbers have four letters four so I'm freaking out again I wrote it to my teacher I go check this out four numbers have four letters she's like who cares what's the big deal I said this is this is the way I mean it makes sense because look it splits your numbers when you're doing it this way watch where the four-letter words end up 0 through 4 5 through 9 the four letter words are bookends on your fingers to help you remember to count from 0 to 4 5 to 9 10 has nothing to do with numbers alright everybody cool and then one other number it's no big deal but I have to bring it up because it was a really funny moment my teacher I was working on the number 7 and I was looking at the word spelled se ve N and I caught it right away I don't know why maybe you guys still haven't noticed and he eventually did but if you cross off the S you end up with the word even but 7 is an odd number so I just walked up to my teacher I said who put the word even in an odd number why did you do that she's like oh I never noticed that before no big deal I was like are you kidding me this is a huge problem we have to fix this immediately and she I didn't even sleep that night I was so distraught over this but it hit me the next day we had to change 7 to sod try it one time you're not liking it that's ok it's alright it's probably not gonna catch on but and it would mess up my whole four letter word things so it's okay but this is how I started thinking about numbers and it was really challenging for my teachers because I was asking all these crazy questions they didn't know I was coming from next but the next day is the day that changed my life fourth grade mrs. loves class Herkimer New York I am in the back of the room where I always sat next to my best friend him and I were on the same baseball team and we would talk about math the whole time and for some reason our teacher was showing us how to do this we had to learn how to add numbers where you carry all right so 7 plus 2 is 9 10 14 carrot so can anybody tell me the answer to that I think I already heard it I did 54 who got that so quick Wow that was very cool I'll quiz you later all right so let's let's try this how'd everybody do it when I asked you to add this up did you go 7 plus 2 is 9 plus 1 is 10 plus 4 is 14 write down the 4 carry the 1 1 2 3 4 plus the 1 is 5 is that how you do it worst way to add absolutely the worst way to add those four numbers together and yet we teach every kid on the planet to do that I got really lucky that day because I was not paying attention to my teacher I did not I didn't hear that we had to add these numbers up from the right and then carry and all that stuff I did not hear a word and she saw me not paying attention she said Scott why don't you come on up and do this problem for us I was totally busted I'm walking up to the front of the room thinking I already hate math I'm gonna hate math even more now when I get done with this I get up to the board and for some reason my brain went backwards I started over here at the tens I said that's a 10 that's a 10 that's a 10 that's a 10 so I started keeping a running total in my head 10 plus 10 is 20 plus 10 is 30 plus 10 is 40 and then I just kept going 40 plus 7 is 47 plus 2 49 plus 150 plus 4 54 and I just wrote down the answer my teacher was amazed that I got it right because she thought I was not listening and she said Scott how did you get this answer where's your carrier you're supposed to put a 1 up here I said I don't even know what you're talking about what's a what's a carry she goes you have to start over here and go this way carry and I said all I started over here I went this way she was know you have to go this way I said but I'm faster than you going this way she's alright you do this so everybody try this one on your own see how you do just raise your hand when you get the answer please don't say it out loud so everybody can experience it just raise your hand already come on keep them up I want to see you again Center who's not getting it really what's the answer say it 88 you know it's funny when I started the show I added up a whole bunch of two-digit numbers I raced the calculator I beat the calculator got it right the first one and I stopped the show and I asked all of you how many of you can do that if you remember your reaction you all started laughing out loud like that even asked you know less want to show you how to do it how many of you got that right almost everybody in the room first try if you'll practice this for five minutes ask your friends or family to write down some two-digit numbers practice adding them up you'll be able to do this faster in your head than anybody on a calculator 20 40 60 70 79 88 boom start grouping you're gonna be like that little kids do this little third fourth fifth graders beating their teachers punching the numbers into the calculator so when I asked you if you could do that and you all started laughing you didn't think you could do it and now you know how easy it is and you can do it here's my next question to you what else can you do that you didn't think you could do what are the limits do we put on ourselves what limits are we putting on our kids with our education system and our mentality and society how we think like this limits our brain activity limits our potential it doesn't allow us to reach our potential so this was an accident that happened to me in fourth grade that changed my life because from that point forward I would always look for an easier way to get the answer when we started learning division multiplication all these things I would look for easier ways to get the answer just give you one more example because I want to move on to something else is multiplication what 7 times 7 9 times 9 12 times 12 no math you have all memorized those questions not one person in this room calculated anything you all memorize this stuff we teach our kids to memorize their math 7 plus 7 9 times 9 these are all memorized they're not learning if they're memorizing it so they get the passing grade teacher gets paid the parents are happy and then they wake up in algebra and go what happened what's going on you know no understanding of basic arithmetic so I just want to show you one more thing that had me what's 7 times 11 4 times 1111 is a magic number I was 11 years old when I noticed this so it really got my attention here's how we do arithmetic 24 times 11 not just in America but around the world we teach kids to go like this 4 times 1 is 4 2 times 1 is 2 don't forget the zero where it's all wrong 4 times 1 is 4 2 times 1 is 2 you add these all together is that how you guys multiply worse way to multiply all right so let me show you the fastest way there's six ways to multiply numbers together but we only teach one the worst one by the way it literally is a trick but I can't get into all those today but I just want to show you this one about the number 11 because that was 11 when I noticed this but watch how easy 11 is any number times 11 3 steps to getting the answer first step just take this back number and drop it down here on the back take the front number drop it into the front and then just add them together what's 2 plus 4 6 and put it in the middle same answer no hardly any work right it's so easy it's an easy mental exercise so let's try it I'm gonna erase that let's all try one let's do 32 times 11 what's the answer 3 2 what's in the middle 5 so what is 43 times 11 473 you're not doing a lot of arithmetic but you're not memorizing anything either this gives your kids a chance to break out of that 10 by 10 memory box that we make kids go through all right okay so I'm not I talked to Jim about this before the show and I want to do more math but I only have so much time and I really want to get into something that's very time sensitive I didn't know what to do with my gift I was in school my parents didn't know what to do with me my teachers didn't know what to do me I was in upstate New York we didn't have a gifted program and I was not very attentive to if I was more into sports so I was more of a distraction for my teachers and I ended up not graduating high school I failed English my senior year by one point and they would not give my high school diploma in New York you have to have an English credit your senior year I had scholarships for math baseball different things forfeited everything Regents scholarships it was a very painful day in my life my teacher failed me by one point on an essay so that I couldn't graduate and it was a brutal brutal day had to turn in my gown miss my graduation event canceled my party it was a you know it's it was a brutal day brutal week and I decided to run and so I joined the United States Air Force and I left upstate New York and I got as far away as I could I went in the Air Force they heard about my skills and they took me to Japan as a special duty assignment I got to do some crazy stuff learn Japanese do all kinds of really crazy projects things like that it was a lot of fun but about four or five years into my Air Force time my sons my supervisors son failed second grade math and he said hey can you sit down with Travis and just talk to him show him show him some things we know you're good with numbers I set that one for 30 minutes the next day his school called and said I don't know what you told this kid but you got to come in and talk to the rest of the class I had never spoken publicly I walked into a group of 2nd and 3rd graders or maybe 25 of them I had the most amazing 40 minutes of my life those kids were so excited about what I could do but more importantly they were so excited about what I was showing them I was like holy cow I have this god-given ability but to find a way to use it to inspire others just dream come true I ran back to my base I said I got to get some time off please give me the afternoons off so I can start visiting more schools and my supervisor my big supervisor said no absolutely not so I snuck in some schools when I could on my own private time and I just kept getting more and more requests and so I finally decided to get kicked out of the Air Force on purpose which is a very awkward thing to do and to do it without going to jail is really tricky so it took me a little bit I got out and the thing is they gave me a big reenlistment bonus when I reached and so they wanted all that back so I woke up on 8 888 with nothing the Air Force had taken my car and then what others you know like the stereo whatever just stuff that you know I'd blown my reenlistment bonus on and I had nothing except my old car from high school 65 Buick Skylark convertible I pawned it for $1,200 bought a $700 plane ticket to LA to get on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson I'd spoken with him on the phone and I went out there had a great meeting and they said great we love you you're gonna be on the show give us your phone numbers like I don't have a number they're like well just give us how do we get ahold I was like I don't know you know I have 200 hours in my pocket I've never been to Los Angeles I need to be on the show like tonight and basically you know that's not how it works I ended up homeless in Los Angeles for a month 28 days never forget it just do what you can and I met this guy who had a company called Cameroon name of it sorry but it was just a small business and it was right on wolves for Bulevar and he said Scott I'll let you run this part of the office during the day and at night you can use my office as an apartment I have a shower bathroom you can just use it as an apartment during the day you work and at night you can stay here and I was like wow this is great so I got a gig in a place to stay all the same time well the only bummer was 28 days later got kicked out and his company got shut down so I lost my job in my house the same day you know so good and bad so I ended up with nothing there and he goes hey I got a friend in Florida who wants you to fly down there and help him with his project he's got a little money he wants to get started so I flew down to West Palm Beach Florida and this guy had invented a glow-in-the-dark doorknob for hotel rooms for security for emergency accidents I was like wow that's either brilliant or ridiculous but they're gonna pay me so I'm gonna go try to sell it so 30 days we met every major hotel chain in Florida and we sold zero glow-in-the-dark doorknobs so I was out of money I was out of time this guy didn't have anything left I had nothing I called my family my little sister Cindy was living in Phoenix Arizona and she she said Scott just get to the airport I got a plane ticket waiting for you and you know come to Phoenix you can stay at my boyfriend's house for a while get situated so I was right after 8888 I'm waiting in West Palm Beach I have nothing to do that and I'd have nowhere to stay I have 20 hours before my flight and I walk into the West Palm Beach public library and I found I'm going through the math which most homeless people do you know when they're hanging out of the library's mouths exit and I walked through and I see this little book it's like this bag and this thin it's ancient it's over a hundred years old and nobody checked it out in like 50 years and the guy had said that there's a calendar a way to calculate the day of the week of the calendar I was like all right you know it's all numbers I got I can handle the numbers so let's see what the formula is so I wrote down after a few hours of looking at it reading through how he was doing it I took on a three and a half by five index card with a little pencil that you get at the library and I wrote down this little algorithm put it in my pocket got on the plane the next day and got this algorithm in my head so that I could figure out what day of the week it was on I landed in Phoenix my little sister Cindy picks me up at the airport I said Cindy what's your birthday July 23rd 60 I was like oh you were born on a Tuesday she goes who cares I was like great that's gonna be a good skill as it's worked out now serving as the global ambassador of world math state which I'll tell you about at the end every school I visit hundreds of kids the best part is not my show the best part is afterwards the kids all get a card for me and they put their name in their birthdate down and I get to have a moment with them I get to say their name I get to look at their birthday I get to tell them it was a Tuesday or a Friday autograph it just have a few seconds with each kid and that is the coolest part of what I do I get to see the kids reactions to what I taught them during the show I get to do something not just some random math trick I'm giving their birthday these kids are running home and saying mom was I born on a Friday this guy figured it out in half a second it connects me with them on a whole different level it's really turned into something special for me but we have a very special day coming up very soon 12-21-12 for those of you don't know that's the end of the Mayan calendar you've you've all heard about this right ok so I don't have to get into that the Mayan calendar comes to an end of a cycle on December 21st 2012 after I discovered that I could calculate the day of the week all these other questions started coming to my head why do we use a calendar that's so difficult to figure out what day of the week a date is on hee the algorithm you have to do to figure out what day of the week a date is on you have to take the year plus the year divided by four plus the date plus the month divided by seven that's what I have to do to calculate what day of the week that date is on I have to put all those numbers in all those variables for those you that are writing it down just so you have it if you want it here are the variables for the months each month has a number valued it's not 1 through 12 it goes like this January's is 0 February is three marches 3 April 6 May 1 June is 4 July is 6 August to September 5 October 0 November 3 December 5 those are the values you got to know so there's all kinds of numbers floating around but I won't get into the algorithm of this as much as I will the questions that made me ask why are we using this crazy calendar do you know the calendar we use is called the what calendar Gregorian calendar anybody know why it's called Gregorian Pope Gregory the 13th and 1569 realized that the calendar we were using from the time of Julius Caesar was miscalculating leap years they were miscalculating leap years this whole time so the only reason I don't say the only reason the big reason the Roman calendar the Gregorian calendar exists is to calculate Easter Easter is the big day it has to be after a full moon after the spring equinox there's all these little variables that have to be added up to keep this thing this very special day to them on the right day because they miscalculated they were off by 10 days so from 1569 to 1582 Pope Gregory and his team tried to figure out what to do and here was what they did everybody went to bed October 5th 1582 and they woke up on October 15 15 8 they decided to just skip 10 days people missed birthdays weddings pay rent I mean if people were crazy Russia was so mad that an adopter for like 300 years it was they were so upset it really offended everybody but the Pope did it papal decree he couldn't do that today just say hey let's just skip 10 days the Roman calendar makes no sense we start the year on January 1st can anybody tell me why why do we start the year on January 1st you

Channel: Superhero You

Views: 2,440,267

Rating: 4.6576262 out of 5

Keywords: scottflansburgpart1

Id: hesKQ_y1P7k

Length: 42min 33sec (2553 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 24 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Jew_Fucker_69]

Don't miss part 2, people.

[u/poprockcide]

In the beginning he does mess up the three digit addition. 356+120+742+893+567+129 is not 2797. He then said oh you typed it in wrong just so you know. I'm very good at this.

[u/elwood2cool]

He's got a point about 2 digit addition. His way is so much easier.

[u/1upman]

This was very informative. I think its great how he has leveraged his personality to spread his ideas. Seems like a key move. This man knows how to market himself. After this talk i found myself adding up car license plates at they drove past me. Math was fun today!

[u/[deleted]]

The whole angle thing seems very arbitrary to me and is possibly not true. Plus these numbers are Arabic not Roman.