25 August,2020 04:06 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Picture/ANI-Twitter
A 20-year-old math prodigy from Hyderabad has made it to the news by winning the first-ever gold for India in the Mental Calculation World Championship at Mind Sports Olympiad (MSO) recently held in London.
Neelakanta Bhanu Prakash, who pursues Mathematics (Hons) from St Stephen College in Delhi, holds world records and 50 Limca records for being the fastest human calculator in the world.
"My brain calculates quicker than the speed of a calculator. Breaking these records, once held by Math maestros like Scott Flansburg and Shakuntala Devi, is a matter of national pride. I have done my bit to place India on the global level of mathematics," Bhanu Prakash said.
The Mind Sports Olympiad, first held in 1998, is a virtual competition that was held with 30 participants up to 57 years of age from 13 countries, including UK, Germany, UAE and France
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Bhanu Prakash said, "I won the gold medal with a clear margin of 65 points. The judges were so spellbound by my speed, that they asked me to perform more calculations to confirm my accuracy."
His pictures with records were shared on Twitter after which he received tonnes of congratulatory messages from netizens.
Bhanu Prakash aims to create a lab for children to change their perception about maths as he says that the phobia caused by the subject is the second-biggest reason for children in rural areas to dropout of school.
"My vision is to create math labs, reach out to millions of children, under what I call in order to make them start loving math and arithmetic calculations. Three out of every four students who study in the government schools of India have trouble in understanding basic Mathematics. The phobia caused by math and the demotivation is the number two cause for kids opting out of the rural schools in India." he said.
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