The Human Calculator, Scott Flansburg, presenting the 3rd place trophy to Mathlete's AJ, Ryan and Noah.
Fifth grade students AJ Kawczynski and Noah Kamerling along with third grade student Ryan Colflesh represented Haddonfield in the American Math Challenge/Mathcounts online challenge 2009. Beginning November 9, 2009, the trio took part in 60 second mental arithmetic games or worked on national Mathletics curriculum activities and questions at their own pace. Under the direction of Haddonfield teacher Matt Maguire, AJ, Noah and Ryan had until November 16 to complete the online challenge while competing against students from over 4,500 schools during the inaugural Math Challenge.
When the results were tallied, the trio finished in third place earning a trophy for the school, individual plaques and a visit from Scott Flansburg, the Human Calculator. Flansburg was dubbed “The Human Calculator” by TV host Regis Philbin. According to Flansburg’s website, 'Scott earned this nickname because of his remarkable math skills that allow him to add, subtract, multiply, and divide (even do square and cube roots) all in his head with amazing speed and calculator accuracy.'
Flansburg is the current Guinness World Record Holder as the 'Fastest Human Calculator' for adding the same number to itself more times in 15 seconds than a person could do with a calculator.
On Thursday, January 7, 2010, the Human Calculator visited with the three Mathletes and demonstrated his skills during an assembly at Central School. Every student was mesmerized by the speed and accuracy of answers. In addition, students learned why our numbers are in the shapes we know today, how every number – no matter what combination – can be reduced to nine and to quote the Human Calculator 'if you get 9, everything is fine.'
Other humorous math facts shared by Flansburg included the only number with four letters is the number 4 which means the number 4 must be special. Zero, four, five and nine are the bookends to the 10 digits we used for math and all four numbers have four letters.Then Scott brought up the number seven – take away the 's' and you have the word 'even.' Seven is an odd number. Scott recommends that seven should be changed to “sodd” – we will see if this catches on.
Comments
Nice photo and article. Way to go!
Great for the students......to have this publicity.......
Most of the time, you hear only negative things......wonderful
to hear what positive things, students are doing.
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