Truman Henry Safford - Legitimate, and if so, how?

[hereandnow672]

Allow the following to exemplify my curiosity toward how the human mind works:

According to non-cited information via wikipedia.com, Truman Henry Safford is said to have calculated the square of 365,365,365,365,365,365 in less than a minutes time. It should be needless to say that this information may very well be either heavily exaggerated or false to begin with, however, that is not the point. What I'm interested in is how "human calculators" can produce, relatively instantaneously, accurate mental calculations to similar types of problems.

Are these people even real or merely a product of myth? Have any of these people ever attempted to explain how this may be possible?

Does anybody else find the potential answers to these questions as valuable as I do?

 

[chiro]

Allow the following to exemplify my curiosity toward how the human mind works:

According to non-cited information via wikipedia.com, Truman Henry Safford is said to have calculated the square of 365,365,365,365,365,365 in less than a minutes time. It should be needless to say that this information may very well be either heavily exaggerated or false to begin with, however, that is not the point. What I'm interested in is how "human calculators" can produce, relatively instantaneously, accurate mental calculations to similar types of problems.

Are these people even real or merely a product of myth? Have any of these people ever attempted to explain how this may be possible?

Does anybody else find the potential answers to these questions as valuable as I do?

There was a video (a documentary) about asian kids that were trained very early with an abacus that by the time they reached about 12 or so, they could do very large calculations in their heads.

I think the documentary is the Boy with the incredible brain:



Scroll half-way into the clip and you will see what I mean. They don't do square roots but you'll see what I mean.