Hello there! I’m Daniel Timms, a specialist in mental maths, born in England, but travelling internationally since 2016.
My career started conventionally enough, with a Mathematics degree from the University of Cambridge and a software job at Hewlett Packard. However, in 2012 I got involved in advanced mental calculation, attending the Mental Calculation World Cup that year in Giessen, Germany. At that event, I met many amazing humans who dedicated their time to doing all sorts of arithmetic as quickly as possible in their head.
In 2016, I left my stable lifestyle and job to travel internationally. I joked that it was just to escape the cold British Winter, but in reality it allowed me to explore many lifestyles, work for a while as a trekking guide, learn Spanish, and meet a wide variety of interesting and ambitious people. Honestly, this was the best decision I ever made.
I also started to experiment more within mental calculation, setting a new British record for Calendar date calculation at 59 in one minute, winning the bronze medal for Hectoc at Memoriad 2016, and developing several techniques for deep roots calculations.
I started the World Mental Calculation website, for news about advanced and competitive mental calculation, performed on stage memorizing 100 binary digits in less than 100 seconds, and presented 20+ workshops on advanced mental maths and memory. Here is an interview I did with Australian MENSA and a podcast with Ronald Johnson’s Craft of Memory Podcast.
Mental Maths Coaching & Workshops
Since most people who contact me about improving mental maths are professionals who could use the skills for real-life, practical purposes, much of my research for the last 3 years has been in techniques for doing fast maths in everyday settings, such as business conversations, estimation and financial mathematics. For this I’m providing private coaching, corporate and academic workshops, and educational resources. You can read more here about hiring me for coaching.
Content Creation Services
For the last years, I’ve been authoring and editing textbooks and online courses in Mathematics and Computer Science, for clients such as OpenClassrooms, Eton College, and the Egyptian Department of Education. If you would like to hire me for a writing project in Mathematics or STEM, please contact me with your ideas.
Events and Competitions
Since 2018, I’ve also been an official trainer providing workshops at the Junior Mental Calculation World Championship, mostly working with teenagers from Germany, Algeria and India to teach the most advanced techniques for calculation. While the official competitions were all cancelled since the beginning of covid, I devised a way to use modern technology to host competitions online, and was contracted by the Mind Sports Olympiad and JMCWC to run successful events in 2020 and 2021.
Unrelated to mental maths, I’ve also been researching the Wim Hof Method, and wrote influential articles about the science behind it at a time when reliable information was scarce.
My piano doesn’t fit in my backpack when I travel, unfortunately! But when I do have access to an instrument, I’ve been composing piano versions of various metal songs.
Contact
I’m always interested in hearing from you when you would like to work with me, or if you would like to request me for media purposes. You can contact me here and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!