The Mental Math Magician: Underground Secrets and Tricks to Amazing Lightning Speed Math and Becoming a Real Life Human Calculator: Mental Math, #1

By Hugo Briggs

Have you ever wondered how those freaks of nature known as Human Calculators do what they do? How they're able to solve seemingly impossible math problems in their head in mere seconds? Well there is a method to their madness! And in this book, I am going to spill all the beans...

From accurately determining the tip on your restaurant bill to considering how much interest you are going to end up paying if you refinance your mortgage, there are plenty of common math problems that you likely run into every day that send you sheepishly scurrying for a calculator. If you are interested in solving these problems, and many more just like them, in the blink of an eye using nothing but your wits and saving yourself countless hours in the long run, then "The Mental Math Magician" is the book you have been waiting for. 

Inside you will find a detailed breakdown of many of the equations, tips, and tricks that the world's best mathematicians use to compute impossibly complicated calculations using nothing more than their mental might.

Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and all else will fall before your startling brain power thanks in large part to a variety of easy to memorize equations and simple strategies that you can use to untangle large numbers all in your mind. So, what are you waiting for? Don't struggle under the tyranny of a calculator any longer, and buy this book today!

Here is a short preview of some of the things you will find in this book:

- Mental Math tricks and how to simplify Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division
- How to do common conversions from everything from miles to kilometers to Fahrenheit to Celsius and everything in between
- The power of rounding and estimating
- Simplifying squares, roots and cubes
- Mental math tricks to impress your friends (my favorite chapter!)
- Easy and impressive ways to read the minds of anyone you meet
- And much, much more…

Don't wait any longer, and see what the Mental Math Magician is all about!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hugo Briggs
• Release date: Mar 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386851783

Book preview

Chapter 1: Addition

Adding two numbers together is the basis of all arithmetic, and mental math is no different. While the tips and tricks discussed in this chapter aren’t going to blow your mind, it will be a useful tool to get used to some of the common practices you will come to know and trust in the coming chapters, while also learning a number of useful patterns as well.

Mix things up

When it comes to adding things together as quickly as possible when numbers are being tossed at you in a hurry, the first thing you want to do is to put them in order in your head in a way that you can add them together as quickly as possible. To do so you will have to arrange the numbers from biggest to smallest first, while 1 + 8 and 8 + 1 both amount to 9, there is less work involved for your brain when you are adding 1 to 8 as opposed to adding 8 to 1. The exception to this rule is if you can put numbers together to form units of 5 or 10 which are almost always going to be easier to do first.

Evens and odds

While adding up a large number of small numbers can be difficult without a pen and paper (or a calculator) handy, assuming each new addition is adding either the same small even or odd number, you can do away with adding at all, and instead skip directly to the next relevant number of either type. You can memorize the basic idea of this trick through common sports cheer 2, 4, 6, 8, who do we appreciate? Specifically, if you start with an even number and then add 2, you will always get another even number, the same with odd numbers. The opposite is true when you are adding one to the number.

Sometimes subtraction is easier

Adding 10 to an existing number is likely one of the easiest types of addition to complete. As such, you can speed up your mental addition if you are stuck on an equation that requires you to add 7, 8, or 9, by simply adding 10 and then subtracting 1, 2, or 3. For example, 8 + 7 might require a few seconds of thought but 10 + 10 – 5 can be done simply and effectively. By following the even and odd pattern from the previous suggestion you can also add the number + 10 and then simply drop to the next lower even or odd number depending on the specifics. For example, if you are adding 9 + 8 then you would add 10 + 8 before subtracting 1 to get 7 and putting it next to the 10 to get 17.

Nearly doubling

If you learned your multiplication tables in elementary school then you are more than capable of taking advantage of this trick by putting in just a little effort. As adding a number to itself is the same as multiplying by 2, then 2 + 2 is 4 and 4 + 4 is 8 etc. If you run through the basics you will find that you can do this type of math for most numbers without much effort. As such, you can then easily add together numbers that are close to doubles of one another 8 + 7 say or 8 + 9. For the first, you would just add 8 to itself to get 16 before subtracting 1 and get 15 as the answer. Going the other way, you would get to 16 before adding 1 to get 17.

Find the 5 inside

This one is a little esoteric, but it can still come in handy from time to time. If you have to add 5 to a number, then you can first find the hidden 5 within that number to make the equation easier for you to work through in your head. For example, say you had to add together 7 + 5, you would then find the 5 within the 7 (5 + 2) to make the new math problem 5 + 5 +2.

10 patterns

It is important to be familiar with the number pairings between the number 0 – 9 that equal 10 to the point that you can pick them out on sight without thinking about it. They will come in handy when adding together a vast array of more complicated numbers. By knowing these patterns on sight, you will then be able to add groups to ten before taking care of the remainder after the fact. For reference, this includes:

•  0 + 10

•  1 + 9

•  2 + 8

•  3 + 7

•  4 + 6

•  5 + 5

This same strategy can be used to combine small groups of numbers into multiple groups of 10 for ease of use. For example, if you took the numbers 11, 8, 9, 7, 3, 5, and 2, you might be at a loss as to how to add them all together in a hurry. However, once you rearrange them