Daniel Tammet is considered as the boy with “incredible brain. ” On the first part of Daniel's documentary on youtube, it showed how he could do huge calculations mentally. In addition, he stated that he could learn a new language for seven days. The very highlight of the documentary is when Daniel recited the pie to its 22,514th decimal place. Daniel did it correctly in front of live audiences for five hours and nine minutes without having any mistake. According to Daniel, he started to execute these abilities during his childhood. When he was four years old, he had a series of seizures and was diagnosed of epilepsy.
From then on, he claimed that the event had changed how his brain functioned, and started to see pictures and patterns in his mind. Based from the Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, Daniel's abilities can be considered as part of the Componential/Analytical Subtheory (Sternberg, 1997). Accordingly, the componential subtheory is directly associated with the analytical giftedness of an individual, in which he/she is able to take apart and synthesize a problem and see possible solutions that are not often seen by others (Sternberg, 1997).
This subtheory has been obvious in Daniel's case since he claims that his mind sees numbers as patterns, pictures and figures that are being formed, which gives him the solution to a certain problem. Based from the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner, 1999), the types of intelligence that Daniel posses include Verbal-linguistic and Logical-mathematical. Verbal-linguistic is associated with words, in which people display a high intelligence with languages and memorization.
Logical-mathematical, on the other hand, is associated with numbers, logic and abstractions, in which people excel in mathematics and other numerical activities (Gardner, 1999), Daniel Tammet's intelligence and ability is a rare condition. Although he possesses a high-functioning mind, he suffers from autistic savant syndrome. According to Darold Treffert (2009), the savant syndrome is not considered as a valid medical diagnosis, but rather a condition wherein some individuals have certain areas of brilliance, expertise or abilities that are in contrast with other individual's overall limitations.
