John Steinberg wrote:
Pure gossip. Besides, even if true, I'll race any abacus expert alive
to the square root of 897,092,107.543.

Feynman tells a story in one of his anecdote books about racing a Japanese
abacus salesman at various arithmetic feats. He loses handily at the
addition and subtraction feats (he's doing pen and cocktail napkin), comes
close on the multiplication problem, beats him on the division problem,
and crushes him on the cube root.

Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
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