Title:
Do we still need Mental Calculation as we reach the AI era?
Abstract:
We face today the disinterest of students for mental calculation as computers do it faster. Students are facing the same computers, fighting robots and racing in virtual streets. Teachers have to answer the question with the video gamer: do we still need to train ourselves, while machines can do better?
For this we need to distinguish our two fundamental modes of evaluating quantities: linear (counting) and logarithmic (feeling). We show how confusion between these modes drives a well-known cognitive bias. A side effect for us is to show our students how to build skills from both: extend thinking from arithmetic to algebras in the first case and evaluate in a fluent mode orders of magnitudes from arbitrary complex equations from the second. Such skills improve their abilities to analyze results or to quickly evaluate possibilities from complex problems. This is why, even today, in Harvard University, some Professors ask their students to estimate the number of sheets of papers they’d need to cover Earth’s equator.
叠颈辞：
Prof. François Cauneau
Professor for Energy and Fluid Mechanics in Mines Paris - France (now retired)
Professor François Cauneau is an Invited Professor at SJTU for SPEIT, he is also an Invited Professor at University of Sichuan. Actually retired from his main position, he was Deputy Director of Mines Paris Campus Pierre Laffitte in Sophia Antipolis. He is still as Professor Emeritus in the Center for Energy and Process in Mines-Paris. Since 1992, he has developed several advanced methods in the domain of radar remote sensing for Geophysical flows studies in Meteorology and Oceanography. He is specialized in visualization techniques and modelling of geophysical and industrial flows, with a special emphasis on decision support systems regarding risk and environmental problems. He has developed advanced designs for energy performances improvement in the domains of Wind Energy and Plasma Industry. He has published more than 200 papers in: Energy – Fluid Mechanics for Industrial Processes – Plasma Sciences - Earth and Environment Remote Sensing (Last publication in Nature Astronomy). He is Former leader of Task Forces for UNEP, IMO and EU for Environmental Plans. He was Co-author for the last Air Transport Carbon metric for GIEC. He was as an Invited member for COP-26.
Date and Time: Thursday, December 4, 2025, 11:50-13:20
Venue: 505 Chen Ruiqiu Building
Please sign up for this talk by 2 pm on December 3, 2025.
