a numbers game

Tom could always be seen as "one of a kind". An early tip-off was at the age of 5, before he could write numbers, he somehow, more or less on his own, learned to double numbers into the millions.

I took Tom to the opening of a Bendix research facility near the U of M North campus. The tour featured their new main Frame computer, that as a demonstration, doubled numbers starting with one for thirty days. In what seemed like a second or two, the number had risen to over 30 million. On the drive home, I asked Tom if he was impressed with the speed of the calculation. He was unimpressed saying he could run faster than the computer. I countered by pointing out that it was the speed of the calculation that I referred to and he quickly said he could do the same thing.

He started out with 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. 256, 512, 1024, 2048, with alacrity. By the time he was up to 131072, I was getting hard-pressed to verify his answers and began figuring how he was doing it and I began to catch on to his system. he was very animated about going on and continued at home.. At bedtime I promised to remember his last number, 4194304, and would let him go on in the morning. I did and he continued until he reached somewhere in the 30 million range.

Along with tree climbing and courting danger, Tom had been interested in big numbers and I had introduced him to tens, hundreds, thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands and millions and billions with little expectations that it had stuck. I was amazed that he came to that skill without having been taught either addition or multiplication. Whether right or wrong, I chose not to focus on this aspect of his capabilities and stressed overall social, athletic, and educational interests.