Math Wiz

At a sold-out show one Saturday morning in June, Arthur Benjamin—aka the Mathemagician—added a surprise guest to the end of his act. Ten-year-old Ethan Brown, wearing a tie for the occasion, timidly took the stage from his seat in the front row.Three months earlier, Ethan had picked up Benjamin’s book, Secrets of Mental Math, and every day after practiced progressively more difficult number tricks. Now, in front of a packed auditorium at a New York City science festival, he was ready to show off his skills.Standing stage left next to an easel, Benjamin asked Ethan to calculate the square of 987. The young protégé rattled off the answer—974,169—even before Benjamin could scribble it down. “I see this, and I just get all choked up,” Benjamin said to the crowd.Read more at...Johns Hopkins Magazine, September 2010.