Scott Flansburg woke up one day with a superpower.
Would he use it for greed? Or for good?
Known as “The Human Calculator,” Flansburg has had this choice since middle school, and has staked his ground clearly.
A Guiness World Record holder for 24 years in mental math calculation, he has spoken at NASA, IBM, and other top brain trusts. But his passion is teaching children, and he has dazzled audiences and spoken to over two million kids so far, showing them that math is “learnable magic.”
And that math is their friend.
“I didn't even know I could do this till I was in 7th or 8th grade. It was just like something woke up in my brain where I could tune into this channel.”
He’s on a mission to tune others in. “It's become socially accepted to be bad at math. If you were illiterate, you would not be proud of that. But if you're innumerate, it's considered okay. It minimizes expectations for the kids and hurts them.”
Teaching them something he calls “Chapter Zero,” he revolutionizes their relationship with numbers and shows them “how patterns exist, and it makes it [math] easier and easier.”
“It’s been a dream come true to have a gift,” says Scott Flansburg, “and I get to use it for good.”
A few years ago, he took his unmatchable counting skills to Vegas and promptly got blacklisted. Blacklisted. He didn’t mind. Gambling’s not for him.
“Why do it? You're sitting at a table with a bunch of strangers who are drinking and dropping some money. It's not a fun environment. It gets old, quick.”
Igniting kids’ enthusiasm to learn doesn’t.
“The way we teach math is using memory, but it can feel like magic when you can do it in your head. This isn’t about memory. The way I teach it is to find the most efficient routes to getting to the answer. And you just build from there.”
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