Daniel Tammet: Different ways of knowing

http://www.ted.com Daniel Tammet has linguistic, numerical and visual synesthesia -- meaning that his perception of words, numbers and colors are woven together into a new way of perceiving and understanding the world. The author of "Born on a Blue Day," Tammet shares his art and his passion for languages in this glimpse into his beautiful mind.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Lamont Scabbard]

next math test i will answer 32x83=turquoise

[madleinfrost]

Lovely video, thanks a lot!

[Karina Pamplona]

If you have time read Born in a Blue Day, awesome

[jeylful]

That he is not fulfilling the potential of his mind? I watched somewhere else that as one of the few savants that can interact with people, he is being studied as the key of how to enhance the way mathematics are taught by replicating his pattern of thought. I imagine that if you dare to call this brilliant man an "idiot", you must be on something at least as big! Care to share it?

[jeylful]

Such an incredibly brilliant man shares a bit of how he perceives the world...and someone comes up with this?

[epoxi]

Hey Daniel, use the resistor color code! Support the Electronics Engineers :D

[aspurr20]

In the bible 6 is a bad number so tammet could really be on to something

[Reo Kin]

There are so many idiots here commenting against this fantastic man. Hey! he's showing you the easiest way to calculate!

[PentiumGold]

He's going very slowly. You can see that he's trying to explain his brain.( very hard task you Internet addicts)

[PentiumGold]

Is it synistegia

[SynthDef]

Hey ANYONE with number synesthesia; are your synesthestics (images or whatever) similar to Daniel's? Or are they totally different?