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Why learn a number like pi to so many decimal places? The answer I gave then as I do now is that pi is for me an extremely beautiful and utterly unique thing. Like the Mona Lisa or a Mozart symphony, pi is its own reason for loving it.

Daniel Tammet

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Daniel Tammet
Age: 45
Born: 1979
Born: January 31
Computer Scientist
Esperantist
Poet
Writer
London
England
Daniel Paul Corney
Numbers
Utterly
Answers
Extremely
Learn
Loving
Decimal
Beautiful
Places
Decimals
Reason
Gave
Mona
Many
Unique
Lisa
Thing
Answer
Mozart
Like
Number
Symphony

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I have never played the lottery in my life and never will. Voltaire described lotteries as a tax on stupidity. More specifically, I think, on innumeracy.
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My autism is a very mild form. It was diagnosed at the age of 25, partly because it wasn't diagnosable as a teenager (this is Asperger's syndrome, specifically). But there were certainly traits within that condition, within the autism spectrum in general, especially at the high functioning end, that I think are best looked at as pluses.
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I recited Pi to 22,514 decimal points in five hours and nine minutes. I was able to do this because of weeks of study, aided by the unusual synaesthesic way my mind perceives numbers as complex multidimensional coloured and textured shapes.
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Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. Numbers, properly considered, make us better people.
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I'm inconsistent because I'm human.
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Life is going to be complex, and the only way we're able navigate our way through it at all is by living as best we can and absorbing those experiences and somehow making intuitive responses in future situations that resemble them in some way.
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There is no such thing as an average person. They really are guidelines for people to grapple with the unknown, and we can always surprise expectations.
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When I was a child, my behavior was far from being what most people would label 'intelligent.' It was often limited, repetitive and anti-social. I could not do many of the things that most people take for granted, such as looking someone in the eye or deciphering a person's body language, and only acquired these skills with much effort over time.
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No relationship is without its difficulties and this is certainly true when one or both of the persons involved has an autistic spectrum disorder. Even so, I believe what is truly essential to the success of any relationship is not so much compatibility, but love. When you love someone, virtually anything is possible.
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Every culture has contributed to maths just as it has contributed to literature. It's a universal language numbers belong to everyone.
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My mother is not a model. She is not perfect. That awareness is part of learning to love someone. Predicting the actions of someone is an act of love. We persist, even when we get it wrong. That's the beauty of love.
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Logic obviously is important. You need to be able to figure things out, to go to the end of a particular problem. But intuition is very important because it references things that logic alone cannot.
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Moment by moment throughout our lifetime, our brains hum with the work of making meaning: weaving together many thousands of threads of information into all manner of thoughts, feelings, memories, and ideas.
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I'm not sure I'm the only savant with high IQ or with an above average IQ. Again, it may just be that we don't know very many of the others.
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I have tried to be more flexible, but I always end up feeling more uncomfortable. Retaining a sense of control is really important. I like to do things in my own time, and in my own style, so an office with targets and bureaucracy just wouldn't work.
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I certainly have routines in my day-to-day life that are important to me and still give me feelings of security and control, but the capacity to break out of them every so often as I travel has given me a second wind.
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When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think.
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Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, 'Chess is life.' I would say, 'Pi is life.'
Daniel Tammet
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You don't have to be disabled to be different, because everybody's different.
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Aesthetic judgments, rather than abstract reasoning, guide and shape the process by which we all come to know what we know.
Daniel Tammet