Good Sports: GOLD MEDAL FOR HYDERABAD MATH GENIUS
How long would it take you to multiply 869,463,853 by 73? It takes 20-year-old Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash just 26 seconds to produce the answer: 63,470,861,269.
The Hyderabad man recently became the first Asian (and first non-European) to win gold at the Mental Calculation World Championship at the Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) in London.
Prakash, known in India as the “world’s fastest human calculator,” does not like to be called a prodigy, because his math prowess comes largely through rigorous mental training.
“Let’s say I am doing a multiplication of 8,763 multiplied by eight,” he told CNN. “I’ll probably multiply 8,000 by eight which is 64,000; 700 by eight which is 5,600; 60 by eight which is 480; three by eight is 24. And I add all of these. But this requires the human brain to remember all this.”
Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
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