Scott Flansburg, The Human Calculator on ”Math Hacks Anyone Can Learn To Transform Your Math Mindset”

Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast for episode #150 with Scott Flansburg[i] who Regis Philbin called “The Human Calculator[ii]” because he can mentally count faster than a calculator. Watch this interview on YouTube here. https://youtu.be/aa8mbxvYqrc Learn more about Scott Flansburg's online programs here. https://scottflansburg.com/a/andrea See past episodes here. https://www.achieveit360.com/episodes/   On this episode you will learn:✔︎  How someone with incredible math abilities has started the National Counting Bee to share his talents with students around the country. ✔︎ 2 NEW WAYS to look at numeracy and math that will change your mindset forever. ✔︎ How Scott Flansburg got into the Guinness World Book of Records for his unique mathematical abilities and what his brain scans revealed about his brain. ✔︎ Scott's vision for the future and how he plans to change the way ALL 3rd graders approach math in the future. I'm Andrea Samadi, author, and educator from Toronto, Canada, now in Arizona, and like many of our listeners, have been fascinated with learning and understanding the science behind high performance strategies in our schools, sports, and the workplace with ideas that we can all use, understand and implement immediately. I do want to thank the listeners who have sent me messages through social media about how you are using these podcast episodes in your personal and professional lives. We are approaching our goal of hitting 200 episodes and 100,000 downloads and couldn’t do this without listeners, or high-quality guests. Back to this episode. After being introduced to Howard Berg[iii], who holds the Guinness World record for speed reading, I was introduced to Dave Farrow[iv], a two-time Guinness World Record holder for correctly memorizing and recalling the exact order of 59 decks of shuffled playing cards. I began to see that extraordinary results are possible, when regular people, like you and me, do certain things in a certain way. I look forward to sharing Scott Flansburg’s story, to see what strategies we can learn and implement to help us all improve our numeracy skills. Yes, he does hold the Guinness World Record for the fastest mental calculation after adding the same number to itself more times in 15 seconds, even faster than anyone could do with a calculator. I’ve heard of the importance of developing strong numeracy skills twice already, from past guests. On episode #138,[v] Professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Dr. Daniel Ansari, affirmed that research shows that students with weak numeracy skills are more likely to default on their mortgage payments in the future, and on episode #146[vi] Dr. Howard Rankin, an expert in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience who spoke on the topic of “How Not to Think” agreed that low numeracy skills are a noticeable problem in the US, and that many people have no idea on the concept of “compounding interest.” Let’s see what we can learn from Scott Flansburg. But first, here’s a bit more about him. Since about 1990 Scott Flansburg has regularly given lectures and presentations at schools. He has been a presenter at organizations such as NASA, IBM, The Smithsonian Institution, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the Mental Calculation World Cup. The latter described Flansburg as “more an auditory than a visual [mental] calculator”. One of Flansburg’s “personal missions” is to use education to elevate math confidence and self-esteem in adults and children. He says “Why has it become so socially acceptable to be bad at math?,” and reminds us that “If you were illiterate, you wouldn’t say that on TV, but you can say that you are bad at math. We have to change the attitude.” He believes students should become proficient with calculation methods rather than relying on table memorization. Scott is the creator of The Counting Bee™[vii], an annual STEM compet