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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.
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