Bestselling author Daniel Tammet (Thinking in Numbers) is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life and able to explain what is happening inside his head.
He sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him the most unimaginable mental powers, much like those portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rain Man.
Fascinating and inspiring, Born on a Blue Day explores what it’s like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human—our minds.
Bestselling author Daniel Tammet (Thinking in Numbers) is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life and able to explain what is happening inside his head.
He sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him the most unimaginable mental powers, much like those portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rain Man.
Fascinating and inspiring, Born on a Blue Day explores what it’s like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human—our minds.
Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
256Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
256Paperback(Reprint)
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Overview
Bestselling author Daniel Tammet (Thinking in Numbers) is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life and able to explain what is happening inside his head.
He sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head. He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week. In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record. He has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him the most unimaginable mental powers, much like those portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rain Man.
Fascinating and inspiring, Born on a Blue Day explores what it’s like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human—our minds.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781416549017 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Free Press |
Publication date: | 10/16/2007 |
Edition description: | Reprint |
Pages: | 256 |
Sales rank: | 155,831 |
Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.44(h) x 0.60(d) |
Lexile: | 1170L (what's this?) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
1
Blue Nines and Red Words I was born on January 31, 1979 -- a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number 9 or the sound of loud voices arguing. I like my birth date, because of the way I'm able to visualize most of the numbers in it as smooth and round shapes, similar to pebbles on a beach. That's because they are prime numbers: 31, 19, 197, 97, 79 and 1979 are all divisible only by themselves and 1. I can recognize every prime up to 9,973 by their "pebble-like" quality. It's just the way my brain works. I have a rare condition known as savant syndrome, little known before its portrayal by actor Dustin Hoffman in the Oscar-winning 1988 film Rain Man. Like Hoffman's character, Raymond Babbitt, I have an almost obsessive need for order and routine which affects virtually every aspect of my life. For example, I eat exactly 45 grams of porridge for breakfast each morning; I weigh the bowl with an electronic scale to make sure. Then I count the number of items of clothing I'm wearing before I leave my house. I get anxious if I can't drink my cups of tea at the same time each day. Whenever I become too stressed and I can't breathe properly, I close my eyes and count. Thinking of numbers helps me to become calm again. Numbers are my friends, and they are always around me. Each one is unique and has its own personality. The number 11 is friendly and 5 is loud, whereas 4 is both shy and quiet -- it's my favorite number, perhaps because it reminds me of myself. Some are big -- 23, 667, 1,179 -- while others are small: 6, 13, 581. Some are beautiful, like 333, and some are ugly, like 289. To me, every number is special. No matter where I go or what I'm doing, numbers are never far from my thoughts. In an interview with talk show host David Letterman in New York, I told David he looked like the number 117 -- tall and lanky. Later outside, in the appropriately numerically named Times Square, I gazed up at the towering skyscrapers and felt surrounded by 9s -- the number I most associate with feelings of immensity. Scientists call my visual, emotional experience of numbers synesthesia, a rare neurological mixing of the senses, which most commonly results in the ability to see alphabetical letters and/or numbers in color. Mine is an unusual and complex type, through which I see numbers as shapes, colors, textures and motions. The number 1, for example, is a brilliant and bright white, like someone shining a flashlight into my eyes. Five is a clap of thunder or the sound of waves crashing against rocks. Thirty-seven is lumpy like porridge, while 89 reminds me of falling snow. Probably the most famous case of synesthesia was the one written up over a period of thirty years from the 1920s by the Russian psychologist A. R. Luria of a journalist called Shereshevsky with a prodigious memory. "S," as Luria called him in his notes for the book The Mind of a Mnemonist, had a highly visual memory which allowed him to "see" words and numbers as different shapes and colors. "S" was able to remember a matrix of 50 digits after studying it for three minutes, both immediately afterwards and many years later. Luria credited Shereshevsky's synesthetic experiences as the basis for his remarkable short- and long-term memory. Using my own synesthetic experiences since early childhood, I have grown up with the ability to handle and calculate huge numbers in my head without any conscious effort, just like the Raymond Babbitt character. In fact, this is a talent common to several other real-life savants (sometimes referred to as "lightning calculators"). Dr. Darold Treffert, a Wisconsin physician and the leading researcher in the study of savant syndrome, gives one example, of a blind man with "a faculty of calculating to a degree little short of marvelous" in his book Extraordinary People:When he was asked how many grains of corn there would be in any one of 64 boxes, with 1 in the first, 2 in the second, 4 in the third, 8 in the fourth, and so on, he gave answers for the fourteenth (8,192), for the eighteenth (131,072) and the twenty-fourth (8,388,608) instantaneously, and he gave the figures for the forty-eighth box (140,737,488,355,328) in six seconds. He also gave the total in all 64 boxes correctly (18,446,744,073,709,551, 616) in forty-five seconds.My favorite kind of calculation is power multiplication, which means multiplying a number by itself a specified number of times. Multiplying a number by itself is called squaring; for example, the square of 72 is 72 x 72 = 5,184. Squares are always symmetrical shapes in my mind, which makes them especially beautiful to me. Multiplying the same number three times over is called cubing or "raising" to the third power. The cube, or third power, of 51 is equivalent to 51 x 51 x 51 = 132,651. I see each result of a power multiplication as a distinctive visual pattern in my head. As the sums and their results grow, so the mental shapes and colors I experience become increasingly more complex. I see 37's fifth power -- 37 x 37 x 37 x 37 x 37 = 69,343,957 -- as a large circle composed of smaller circles running clockwise from the top around. When I divide one number by another, in my head I see a spiral rotating downwards in larger and larger loops, which seem to warp and curve. Different divisions produce different sizes of spirals with varying curves. From my mental imagery I'm able to calculate a sum like 13 ÷ 97 (0.1340206...) to almost a hundred decimal places. I never write anything down when I'm calculating, because I've always been able to do the sums in my head, and it's much easier for me to visualize the answer using my synesthetic shapes than to try to follow the "carry the one" techniques taught in the textbooks we are given at school. When multiplying, I see the two numbers as distinct shapes. The image changes and a third shape emerges -- the correct answer. The process takes a matter of seconds and happens spontaneously. It's like doing math without having to think. Different tasks involve different shapes, and I also have various sensations or emotions for certain numbers. Whenever I multiply with 11 I always experience a feeling of the digits tumbling downwards in my head. I find 6s hardest to remember of all the numbers, because I experience them as tiny black dots, without any distinctive shape or texture. I would describe them as like little gaps or holes. I have visual and sometimes emotional responses to every number up to 10,000, like having my own visual, numerical vocabulary. And just like a poet's choice of words, I find some combinations of numbers more beautiful than others: ones go well with darker numbers like 8s and 9s, but not so well with 6s. A telephone number with the sequence 189 is much more beautiful to me than one with a sequence like 116. This aesthetic dimension to my synesthesia is something that has its ups and downs. If I see a number I experience as particularly beautiful on a shop sign or a car license plate, there's a shiver of excitement and pleasure. On the other hand, if the numbers don't match my experience of them -- if, for example, a shop sign's price has "99 pence" in red or green (instead of blue) -- then I find that uncomfortable and irritating. It is not known how many savants have synesthetic experiences to help them in the areas they excel in. One reason for this is that, like Raymond Babbitt, many suffer profound disability, preventing them from explaining to others how they do the things that they do. I am fortunate not to suffer from any of the most severe impairments that often come with abilities such as mine. Like most individuals with savant syndrome, I am also on the autistic spectrum. I have Asperger's syndrome, a relatively mild and high-functioning form of autism that affects around 1 in every 300 people in the United Kingdom. According to a 2001 study by the U.K.'s National Autistic Society, nearly half of all adults with Asperger's syndrome are not diagnosed until after the age of sixteen. I was finally diagnosed at age twenty-five following tests and an interview at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge. Autism, including Asperger's syndrome, is defined by the presence of impairments affecting social interaction, communication, and imagination (problems with abstract or flexible thought and empathy, for example). Diagnosis is not easy and cannot be made by a blood test or brain scan; doctors have to observe behavior and study the individual's developmental history from infancy. People with Asperger's often have good language skills and are able to lead relatively normal lives. Many have above-average IQs and excel in areas that involve logical or visual thinking. Like other forms of autism, Asperger's is a condition affecting many more men than women (around 80 percent of autistics and 90 percent of those diagnosed with Asperger's are men). Single-mindedness is a defining characteristic, as is a strong drive to analyze detail and identify rules and patterns in systems. Specialized skills involving memory, numbers, and mathematics are common. It is not known for certain what causes someone to have Asperger's, though it is something you are born with.
For as long as I can remember, I have experienced numbers in the visual, synesthetic way that I do. Numbers are my first language, one I often think and feel in. Emotions can be hard for me to understand or know how to react to, so I often use numbers to help me. If a friend says they feel sad or depressed, I picture myself sitting in the dark hollowness of number 6 to help me experience the same sort of feeling and understand it. If I read in an article that a person felt intimidated by something, I imagine myself standing next to the number 9. Whenever someone describes visiting a beautiful place, I recall my numerical landscapes and how happy they make me feel inside. By doing this, numbers actually help me get closer to understanding other people.
I remember as a young child, during one of my frequent trips to the local library, spending hours looking at book after book trying in vain to find one that had my name on it. Because there were so many books in the library, with so many different names on them, I'd assumed that one of them -- somewhere -- had to be mine. I didn't understand at the time that a person's name appears on a book because he or she wrote it. Now that I'm twenty-six I know better. If I were ever going to find my book one day, I was going to have to write it first.
Table of Contents
Blue Nines and Red Words 1
Early Years 13
Struck by Lightning: Epilepsy 29
School Days 47
Odd One Out 73
Adolescence 91
Ticket to Kaunas 113
Falling in Love 139
The Gift of Tongues 159
A Very Large Slice of Pi 173
Meeting Kim Peek 187
Reykjavik, New York, Home 205
Reading Group Guide
Reading Group Discussion Guide for Born On A Blue Day
1. How does Daniel Tammet's experience of numbers and language differ from that of most people? What explains his intense attraction to prime numbers? How does Daniel characterize his relationships with numbers, and how does it compare to his relationships with people?
2. How are Daniel's savant syndrome and his epilepsy connected? Why might epilepsy allow some regions of Daniel's brain to perform with remarkable efficiency? Of Daniel's many remarkable abilities as a savant, which did you find most fascinating or extraordinary, and why?
3. "Predictability was important to me, a way of feeling in control in a given situation, a way of keeping feelings of anxiety at bay, at least temporarily." To what extent is Daniel's need for regularity and predictability a kind of compulsion? Why might similar behavior in someone without savant syndrome be perceived as neurosis? How does the unexpected affect Daniel?
4. How can Daniel's professional success be understood in light of his having grown up in a large family that required a great deal of him socially, despite his autism? What roles might his family's uncertain finances and his father's illness have played in Daniel's development? How would you characterize Daniel's connection to his family as an adult?
5. Why was Daniel unable to reveal the fact of his homosexuality to his parents prior to his time volunteering in Lithuania? How did his experiences living abroad affect Daniel's sense of self? To what extent were you surprised at Daniel's ability to adapt to life in another country?
6. How would you describe Daniel's relationship with his partner, Neil? In light of Daniel's unique neurological concerns, why was their decision to move in together especially complicated? How do they accommodate Daniel's autistic spectrum disorder in their day-to-day life as a couple? Given that Daniel has difficulty feeling and identifying emotions, why do you think he is able to experience romantic love?
7. "The relationship I have with language is quite an aesthetic one, with certain words and combinations of words being particularly beautiful and stimulating to me." How does Daniel use his knowledge of different languages to help him understand and learn new languages? What does Daniel's invention of a language of his own, Mänti, reveal about his desire to communicate his appreciation of language to the world?
8. How does Daniel describe his experience of the number pi? Why are scientists particularly interested in his ability to see numbers as landscapes with color and texture? How did Daniel's memorization and recitation of thousands of digits of pi affect him and how did it impact his visibility in the world of savant study?
9. Why might Daniel have felt a special kinship with Kim Peek, the person whose life as a savant inspired the film, Rain Man? How does Daniel's experience of autism differ from Kim's, and what neurological abilities do they share? Why do you think Daniel describes meeting Kim Peek as "one of the happiest moments" of his life?
10. What impact did Daniel's conversion to Christianity in 2002 have on his life? What role does his religious belief play in his engagement and interaction with others? To what extent are you surprised that someone with Daniel's gifts and abilities is able to put his faith in God?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. If you are craving more information about the incredibly fascinating life and mind of Daniel Tammet, visit his official website: http://www.optimnem.co.uk/, where you can see some of his artwork, read his blog, and practice some common tongue twisters in Spanish and French that he has included for the entertainment of his visitors.
2. Daniel Tammet sees numbers and words in terms of their color and texture as a feature of his synesthetic perception. Do certain words or numbers lend themselves to colors or textures in your imagination? Draw up a list of random words and then share them with members of your book group to see if the words call up colors or textures in common for fellow readers.
3. To watch scenes from the documentary, Brainman, that features Daniel Tammet and Kim Peek, visit http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/tammet.cfm, which also includes links to footage and profiles of other amazing savants, and a wealth of information about savant syndrome and how it manifests itself in the human brain.
Introduction
Reading Group Discussion Guide for Born On A Blue Day
1. How does Daniel Tammet's experience of numbers and language differ from that of most people? What explains his intense attraction to prime numbers? How does Daniel characterize his relationships with numbers, and how does it compare to his relationships with people?
2. How are Daniel's savant syndrome and his epilepsy connected? Why might epilepsy allow some regions of Daniel's brain to perform with remarkable efficiency? Of Daniel's many remarkable abilities as a savant, which did you find most fascinating or extraordinary, and why?
3. "Predictability was important to me, a way of feeling in control in a given situation, a way of keeping feelings of anxiety at bay, at least temporarily." To what extent is Daniel's need for regularity and predictability a kind of compulsion? Why might similar behavior in someone without savant syndrome be perceived as neurosis? How does the unexpected affect Daniel?
4. How can Daniel's professional success be understood in light of his having grown up in a large family that required a great deal of him socially, despite his autism? What roles might his family's uncertain finances and his father's illness have played in Daniel's development? How would you characterize Daniel's connection to his family as an adult?
5. Why was Daniel unable to reveal the fact of his homosexuality to his parents prior to his time volunteering in Lithuania? How did his experiences living abroad affect Daniel's sense of self? To what extent were you surprised at Daniel's ability to adapt to life in another country?
6. How would you describe Daniel's relationship with his partner,Neil? In light of Daniel's unique neurological concerns, why was their decision to move in together especially complicated? How do they accommodate Daniel's autistic spectrum disorder in their day-to-day life as a couple? Given that Daniel has difficulty feeling and identifying emotions, why do you think he is able to experience romantic love?
7. "The relationship I have with language is quite an aesthetic one, with certain words and combinations of words being particularly beautiful and stimulating to me." How does Daniel use his knowledge of different languages to help him understand and learn new languages? What does Daniel's invention of a language of his own, Mänti, reveal about his desire to communicate his appreciation of language to the world?
8. How does Daniel describe his experience of the number pi? Why are scientists particularly interested in his ability to see numbers as landscapes with color and texture? How did Daniel's memorization and recitation of thousands of digits of pi affect him and how did it impact his visibility in the world of savant study?
9. Why might Daniel have felt a special kinship with Kim Peek, the person whose life as a savant inspired the film, Rain Man? How does Daniel's experience of autism differ from Kim's, and what neurological abilities do they share? Why do you think Daniel describes meeting Kim Peek as "one of the happiest moments" of his life?
10. What impact did Daniel's conversion to Christianity in 2002 have on his life? What role does his religious belief play in his engagement and interaction with others? To what extent are you surprised that someone with Daniel's gifts and abilities is able to put his faith in God?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. If you are craving more information about the incredibly fascinating life and mind of Daniel Tammet, visit his official website: http://www.optimnem.co.uk/, where you can see some of his artwork, read his blog, and practice some common tongue twisters in Spanish and French that he has included for the entertainment of his visitors.
2. Daniel Tammet sees numbers and words in terms of their color and texture as a feature of his synesthetic perception. Do certain words or numbers lend themselves to colors or textures in your imagination? Draw up a list of random words and then share them with members of your book group to see if the words call up colors or textures in common for fellow readers.
3. To watch scenes from the documentary, Brainman, that features Daniel Tammet and Kim Peek, visit http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/tammet.cfm, which also includes links to footage and profiles of other amazing savants, and a wealth of information about savant syndrome and how it manifests itself in the human brain.