Human Calculator

Alexis Lemaire is a world famous mathlete. His task was to find the 13th root of 85,877,066,894,718,045,
602,549,144,850,158,599,202,771,247,748,960,878,023,151,
390,314,284,284,465,842,798,373,290,242,826,571,823,153,
045,030,300,932,591,615,405,929,429,773,640,895,967,991,
430,381,763,526,613,357,308,674,592,650,724,521,841,103,
664,923,661,204,223with the answer being  2396232838850303 that he calculated in under 77.99 seconds, breaking his own previous record. When asked about his incredible ability, Lemaire responded saying, "It is quite difficult. I did a lot of preparation for this. More than four years of work and a lot of training every day. A lot of memorising. I need three things - calculating, memorising and the third on mathematical skills. It is a lot of work and maybe a natural gift" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6913236.stm). So how does he do it? Lemaire talks about being able to transform number into structure or shapes to "see" the answer to the problem, "I see images, phrases, actions. It's very tactile, sensitive. I have these associations between places and numbers - some places are imaginary, I try to vary so I don't confuse the numbers" He can also think of numbers and see movies or sentense. He calls it "translating numbers to words" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6913236.stm). It is truely amazing how our brains work sometimes!