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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. By what quality can Daniel recognize every prime number up to 9,973?

2. When Daniel joins his brother, Lee, and his friend, Eddie, on a week's holiday with Eddie's family, how does Daniel act?

3. What item did Daniel break in school that cost him a letter of apology and his parents' money?

4. In Chapter 5, what does Daniel describe as his overwhelming feeling at the time?

5. When Daniel's father was just a child, what was his main chore in life?

Short Essay Questions

1. What differentiates people with Asperger's syndrome?

2. In what ways does Asperger's syndrome, the kind of autism Daniel has, affect his life?

3. Why did the workers at the nursery school Daniel attended not try very hard to make him play with the other children?

4. Professor Allan Snyder believes that savant abilities may be in everyone. How does he feel that Daniels abilities were unlocked?

5. Why was Daniel able to score so well on weekly vocabulary or spelling tests?

6. When going home from secondary school on the first day, why did Daniel take the bus going in the wrong direction?

7. Daniel's poor coordination made swimming and learning to ride a bike difficult for him. How did he eventually learn these skills?

8. Other boys teased and bullied Daniel. What eventually made them stop?

9. Why do you think Kevin, Daniel's father, tells his wife who is pregnant with Daniel, "Whatever happens, we'll love him."

10. Why did Daniel's brothers and sisters play "games" with him such as ironing clothes and collecting books around the house to categorize?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why does Daniel find languages so fascinating? What aspects of languages are difficult for him? How does his facility with language help him in other areas of life?

Essay Topic 2

Daniel experiences numbers and language synesthetically.

1) Describe what synesthesia is.

2) Explain some ways in which Daniel experiences synesthesia.

3) How is this different from the way the average person perceives numbers and words?

Essay Topic 3

Pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Daniel (as well as many others) is fascinated with pi. It is an infinite, irrational number. Daniel spends a chapter in the book explaining pi and his relationship with it. Why do you think this fascinates him? Does he see pi in the same way that he experiences other numbers and words? Why, besides raising money for epilepsy research, does Daniel learn pi to some many decimal places at all?

(see the answer keys)

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