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Transcription of interview with Arthur Benjamin on February 4, 2013.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Arthur Benjamin is a professor of math. In fact, he is kind of a mathematical magician.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Benjamin on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: One of the things I’ve seen you talked about in your TED talks and
on some of you courses is improving your math skills. Is it really possible to improve your
math skills?
Arthur Benjamin: Absolutely, I think mathematics is a skill just like anything else like playing
an instrument or playing a sport or learning to type or learning to juggle, things that
might seem a little bit unnatural at first but if you put your mind to it and you give
yourself the right amount of practice, anybody can get much better at it.
Douglas Goldstein: Are you only talking about basic things like adding and subtracting?
Arthur Benjamin: It begins with arithmetic and almost all mathematics has a foundation
of arithmetic so it’s important that you’re being comfortable with doing your addition,
subtraction, multiplication and division eventually percentages, fractions, decimals but after
you’ve done that under your belt, it’s important to go on to the next level of math
which is algebra. Beyond that, you have your pick. You could study geometry, trigonometry,
probability, statistics, calculus, unlimited possibilities.
Douglas Goldstein: A lot of the specialty you have or what you’re really probably
most known for is mental math. What’s the real benefit of doing it in your head as opposed
to buying a snazzy calculator?
Arthur Benjamin: I think if you’re doing a large important calculation then of course,
you’re going to want to go to your calculator, but most of the time like when reading the
newspaper, watching the news or listening to your excellent radio program, you wanted
to be able to get a good mental estimate of what’s going on. You want to have a general
ballpark figure. It’s not important you know the answer to the last penny but it is
important that you know that we’re talking about something that might be $300 instead
of $3000 or $30. Just to have a ballpark estimate is very important and if you shy away from
doing mental arithmetic and if you can’t do anything with your calculator then you’re
just going to tune off when people start talking numbers at you.
If I have to give three words of advice for doing mental math, it would be left to right. On paper,
we do it from right to left. As you say, we do the pennies before the dollars, before
the hundreds of dollars but if you want to do the problem mentally, we read numbers left
to right, we pronounce them left to right, we should say them left to right and we should
calculate them left to right. It’s more important to know what the thousands are than
to know what pennies are.
Douglas Goldstein: If you had to apply math in the world of finance, can you think of
any ways that people could use a better mental math system in order to improve how they’re
handling their money?
Arthur Benjamin: I know for example that people who trade stocks a lot are very, very quick
at the mental math, that’s their profession but probably as a group they are about quick
as people around with doing mental math. In terms of people who own financing, I would
say you have to focus on the big numbers and don’t be obsessed about getting the answer
to the last penny that’s probably not effective use of your brain but focus on the big numbers,
look at the big picture just like in investing.
Douglas Goldstein: Why do you suppose they don’t teach kids that in school?
Arthur Benjamin: I don’t know. I think if you’re focusing just on pencil and paper
math then yes, it is easier to work from right to left because you can line up your problems
and first get the ones then the tenths and the hundreds. If I have to add up on paper
a long problem of numbers and I even do that from right to left but it’s important that
I get the answer exactly right to the penny. But if I’m doing a mental estimate let’s
say I’m at the grocery store and I’m looking at the items as there being wrong up and I
just want to be able to anticipate roughly what the answer is, then it’s important
to do it from left to right, don’t get distracted by the pennies.
The other reason that they might not teach it in schools and I don’t how the situation
is in Israel but I know a lot of the people who are teaching mathematics to our children
in the United States are not exactly people who themselves love mathematics when they
were children and that’s a problem, people who maybe were afraid of math who are now
passing on that phobia to our kids.
It’s funny what people are willing to admit. There are a lot of people who say the same
thing about math. They’ll say I was never good at that whereas you’d never hear somebody
say, “I struggled with reading for many years” because we know how important it
is to be literate but obviously in today’s more technological data driven world, it’s
important to be numerate just
as much.
Douglas Goldstein: For example, if you have
to multiply 32 times 17?
Arthur Benjamin: I would say that be 544.
Douglas Goldstein: How about 325 squared?
Arthur Benjamin: That would be 105625.
Douglas Goldstein: I was born in 1969, on the26th of November.
Arthur Benjamin: That was a Wednesday.
Douglas Goldstein: You and my mother know that.
Arthur Benjamin: It’s great to tell people things about themselves.
Douglas Goldstein: How do you do some of these things?
Arthur Benjamin: It is all mathematical everything that I do. It’s a skill that anybody can
practice. You can learn about it in my DVD course on the Secrets of Mental Math produced
by the Great Courses. It’s a lot of fun. I could go through the process for you but
it’s all calculations that I’m doing. I’m adding numbers, subtracting, dividing
by 7, looking at the remainder, that remainder will tell you the day of the week but as I
said it’s a skill like typing or juggling that it takes a little bit of time at first
but with a little bit of practice, it goes very quickly.
Douglas Goldstein: If you wanted to suggest to someone a way to get started, let’s say
someone who’s really very calculator dependent. What would be the first step that he should
do to try to improve his math?
Arthur Benjamin: I would try to do the problems without the calculator first or before pressing
the equals button, guessing what they think the answer is and then looking at what the
calculator says and seeing how close you are making it a game if you will. I think by practicing
in that way, your estimation skills will improve dramatically.
Douglas Goldstein: Being that you offer so much to people who want to learn more, how
can people follow your work and get some of your courses.
Arthur Benjamin: If you Google my name, Arthur Benjamin, you might find yourself at my webpage
at Harvey Mudd College where I’m a professor of mathematics. Harvey Mudd is a school of
science and engineering in Southern California where I have excellent students. You can look
up at my TED talks. I’ve given a couple of them. Go to the Great Courses, they have
wonderful DVD courses and audio courses, everything from science, history, religion, philosophy,
you name it. I got three courses there and one of them on the Secrets of Mental Math,
one on the Joy of Mathematics and other on Discrete Mathematics. I’m currently working
on a project for them on the Mathematics of Games and Puzzles and that will come out this
summer whether you want to learn how to solve the Sudoku faster or Rubik’s cube or count
cards or play backgammon or shesh besh if you will. As a matter of fact, that’s one
of my great applications of mental math because you can’t bring a calculator to the backgammon
table so there are a lot of opportunities for doing mental math while playing games.
Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host
of the Goldstein on Gelt radio show (Monday nights at 7:00 PM on www.israelnationalradio.com.
He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel. Securities offered
through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc., Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, NFA, SIFMA. Accounts carried
by National Financial Services LLC. Member NYSE/SIPC, a Fidelity Investments company.
His book Building Wealth in Israel is available in bookstores, on the web, or can be ordered
at: www.profile-financial.com (02) 624-2788 or (03) 524-0942.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription and/or an educational article. While it is
believed to be current and accurate, divergence from the original is to be expected. The original
podcast can be heard at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/. All information on this website is purely
information and should not be used as the sole basis for making financial decisions.
The opinions rendered herein are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of Douglas
Goldstein, Profile Investment Services, Ltd., or Israel National News. Readers should consult
with a professional financial advisor before making any financial decisions. Please see
the complete disclaimer at https://sites.google.com/site/goldsteinradioshows/.