Delusional Much?

After my class at UVU yesterday, a young man came into my classroom and told me that he wanted to talk to me as a "potential student."

The next twenty minutes were very VERY strange.

This young man started out by asking me what is the best way he could learn Calculus.  I told him that the best way I knew of was to take a Calculus class.  He explained that he was working as a theater tech up at Sundance, and that he wouldn't be around long enough to take a class.  He would be leaving for another job in another state in the next couple of months.

Then he started to explain WHY he wanted to learn Calculus.  He asked me if I had heard of the Millenium Prize problems--seven math problems that have until now been considered unsolved.  The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts has offered a prize of one million dollars for a solution to any one of these problems.  I was familiar with these problems.  I read about them in 2010 when the first was solved.  Interestingly, the the prize was declined for "ethical reasons."

This young man told me that he needed to learn calculus because he has solved two of these problems and needs to know calculus so that he could publish his solutions.

Wait, what???

I don't completely discount the fact that someone without a formal math education may have solved previously unsolvable math problems.  Isn't that how Calculus was invented in the first place?  But the chances that THIS young man has solved TWO previously unsolvable problems is extremely remote.

He also told me that he had created a "sub-octal" computer that uses seven bits instead of two.  Again, I don't rule out the possibility that such a thing could exist.  I merely don't believe that this young man created any such thing.  Even if he did, how would this be the game-changing even in the world of computers?  I really can't see it.

I pointed him to MIT's online Calculus course.  He liked that, then asked if I knew someone at UVU that would be able to help mentor him through the publication process for his solutions.

I told him that he was in the wrong place--that UVU is a teaching institution.  He would need help from a professor at a research institution like the University of Utah or Brigham Young University.  He kept pressing me for a name of someone that could help him.

I guess I finally convinced him that I really DIDN'T know anyone that could help him because he finally gave up and left.

The whole experience has left me a little bit unsettled.  I don't know whether I was interacting with someone that is brilliant or someone that is mentally ill.  There were some things about his behavior that actually triggered a bit of an alarm response in me--that made me feel as if he was hiding a darker, more violent side of himself behind the eyes that never seemed to smile with the rest of his face.