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MENTAL CALCULATION
WORLD CUP 2010
By Alex Bellos
The (Baby) Squid
and the Whale
 To
me, this picture sums up the 2010 Mental
Calculation World Cup, which finished
a few hours ago.
On the left is Jerry Newport, aged
61, a part-time taxi driver from Tucson,
Arizona.
On the right is Priyanshi Somani,
aged 11, from Gujurat, India.
They were the two big winners here,
in Magdeburg, Germany, after two days
of lots of mental calculation.
Priyanshi was the overall champion.
And Jerry won the ‘most versatile calculator
award'.
Priyanshi was also the youngest person
in the tournament. Jerry was the oldest.
The results were amazing because
Priyanshi was appearing for the first
time and had only been properly practising
for about a month!
She smashed the world record for
square roots: becoming the first person
ever to work out the square root of
ten different six digit numbers, each
to eight significant figures, in less
that 15 minutes.
In fact, she worked them all out
in only 6mins and 51secs. Astounding.
Jerry, who is nicknamed ‘the Whale'
and who was the inspiration for the
2005 movie Mozart and the Whale,
has Asperger's Syndrome. He was also
appearing for the first time.
The other winners overall were, in
second place: Marc Jornet Sanz, aged
16, from Spain.
And, in third, Alberto Coto, aged
40, from Spain.
Here are the three below:
Marc won the multiplication round
with a world record: he calculated ten
sums, which each were an 8-digit number
multiplied by an 8-digit number, in
4 mins 56secs. Priyanshi was second
– almost twice as far behind at 9mins
and 48secs.
Alberto, who was overall winner last
year, had to console himself with only
being best in the addition round.
The other victor was Yusnier Viera
from Cuba, below. He won the calendar
calculation round: naming the day of
the week of 48 randomly selected dates
in history in one minute.
I will write up the event at length
soon, and post it here. But for the
time being, I wanted to get the pictures
of these wonderful winners up asap.
Yusnier Viera: Calendar
Boy
© Alex Bellos 2010,
Source:
http://alexbellos.com/?p=1282
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