Jibberish

I shared something interesting about myself to my friend, Matt Dinkel yesterday. I never realized that it was so weird. It might show a similarity of low-level Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which I am pretty sure I don't have.

As I walk up and down stairs, I keep track of whether certain sets of stairs are even or odd and memorize them. I do this because I walk up and down stairs by 2's and if it's even, I will take them two at a time all the way through. If the number of stairs is odd, I will take the first one a single step, then the rest by 2's. I guess I do this because I don't want to take an extra step on the even steps. It's pretty weird, but may have to do with my mathematical mind. Some movies that are similar in this way but much more miraculous are Rain Man and A Beautiful Mind.

In Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman plays an autistic adult who has incredible counting and calculating skills. For example, he was able to accurately count a box of toothpicks when they fell on the floor. This movie is actually based on a real person, Kim Peek. In psychology class in high school, we watched an interview of him and he could actually calculate the day of the week of a certain date in a certain year, which is just miraculous.

Learn more about Rain Man: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/

In A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe plays schizophrenic mathematics professor John Nash. To tie this entry into technology, John Nash was a guru at encrypting in his mind. Encrypting is a huge part of Security and Risk Analysis. Nash had hallucinations that he was secretly encrypting data for the government and sent in his hard work in a mailbox. His wife found he letters and showed it to him, and he lost trust with everyone. He had to go through severe treatment, but could not fully recover. He would still continue to see the same imaginary people, but he would have to force himself to ignore them and pretend they are not there.

Learn more about A Beautiful Mind: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0268978/

I recommend everyone who reads this post to watch these two films. They are very interesting and show a relation between mental disorders and mathematical skills.