Tuesday, 10 November 2015

What was the IQ of Shakuntala Devi, The Human Calculator?



While Shakuntala Devi could multiply two 13 digit numbers just under 28 seconds and tell the eighth root of a 14-digit number in less than 10 seconds, everytime, correctly, she could not recite the numbers given to her in the IQ test in reverse order and could only utter 4 digits before stumbling! [1] She was labelled as "average".

And she once calculated 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds which was later verified by writing a special program on Univac 1101 at the US Bureau of Standards. [2]

At the University of Rome one of her answers to the problems was found to be wrong by the calculating machine, but after re-checking it was found that the machine had made the mistake and not Shakuntala.

Oh and meanwhile I just came to know I have an IQ of 130! [3] I beat "The Human Calculator" :D
IQ is for fun and doesn't correspond to intellect as much as you'd think :)

2 comments:

  1. And you are also probably lying about your IQ. You have a lot to learn about Human Ability and intelligence. I spent my life studying the subject and the first thing I learned is that when people have to let you know what their IQ is, they are usualy full of crap. (Dr. Pratt)

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