Written by Daniel Tammet.
Read by James Anthony Pearson.

First of five extracts from Daniel Tammet's new book of essays that celebrates "the science of imagination": mathematics. Today's essay explores the different ways in which cultures across the world approach and describe numbers.

Daniel Tammet is hailed the world over for his extraordinary mind and unique intelligence shaped by high-functioning autistic savant syndrome. He perceives words and numbers as shapes, colours, and emotions, and holds the European record for reciting the mathematical constant Pi to 22,514 decimal places. For Tammet, numbers are beautiful and illuminate our everyday thoughts and lives. His idiosyncratic world view gives us new perspectives on the universal questions of what it is to be human and how we make meaning in our lives.

Abridged and produced by Kirsteen Cameron. Show less