Gaurav Tekriwal - Maths Sutras from Around the World: Speed Calculations on Your Fingertips

This book is for young and enthusiastic learners and explorers of mental arithmetic. It covers methods of maths, which can also be called maths sutras, from around the worldfrom India to Egypt, from Singapore to Japan. You will also get numeorus activities and worksheets that will give you a better grip of the methods shown. Overall, the objective of this book is to make you think mentally and make maths entertaining and enjoyable.

You must be wondering about the need for mental maths methods in this age of calculators and technology? Well, our brain behaves like a muscle. Just like the body, it needs regular exercise too. If you practise regular mental maths exercises and puzzles, you will not only have a sharper mind for math but also sharper logical reasoning skills.

I must also add a that currently, numeracy skills are going down worldwide and not many people can even do basic maths. There is also a phobia around maths. Students loathe it. And in such a scenario, to excel in maths becomes very challenging. Thats where the methods discussed in this book will add value by side-stepping the traditional system and making maths doable and ultra-cool to boot.

Over the last fifteen years, in my passion and quest for simple and quick maths methods for students, I have looked deeply into the concepts of Indian Vedic mathematics, rediscovered by the Indian saint, Tirthaji. I have found that it works beautifully with students across the globe. My thirst for more such methods in other cultures led me to conceptualize this book for young learners. As I explored, I was amazed to discover the learning methods of people in other countries. For example, in Singapore, they have devised a system to do word problems in a visual way called the bar modelling technique. These systems have been included in the curricula in many countries, including the United States of America. When it comes to maths skills, Singapore also ranks number one in the world in a global study of learners.

Japan has an amazing grid puzzle culture. Sudoku has been a worldwide sensation and appears in hundreds of newspapers around the planet. There are other puzzles too, like Kakuro and KenKen, which fascinate me. Students who use this book will benefit greatly from these puzzles which, while being fun-filled, help improve ones mathematical reasoning and logical thinking skills. Watch out for KenKen championships in your city as they get popular and get on top of their puzzle leader board.

Egypt, the name itself takes us back several millennia to the land of the Pharaohs and Pyramids. I was blown away by a YouTube video by Michael S. Schneider, mathematician-author-educator on Egyptian maths. It was so simple and striking that I used some of the content in this book, so that it reaches the right audienceyou! No more struggling with traditional methods. I sometimes wonder whether one day my child would be able to learn the best from all civilizations! Maybe she can someday sit in a classroom and learn, say multiplication from India, division from Egypt, and fractions from Singapore. Wouldnt that be cool? Maybe we can even have a global maths curriculum incorporating the best of all worlds for everybody.

And yes, no more rote learning, no more maths phobia, and certainly, no more tears. Maths can be fun too and this book shows you exactly that! In short, in this book you will see invisible connections between the methods and at the end, take home an endless enchantment with numbers. So without any further ado, lets get the maths magic started!

The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.

Paul Halmos

You must have done addition since you were four or five years old. It is one of the most understood topics that most young people like you excel in. I remember when I was your age, I used to love doing addition problems, I found them rather easy. My teacher at school used to give me A+ with five stars and a sticker whenever I answered a set of problems on addition correctly.

Apparently one day when I was given a set of problems on addition to do mentally, I struggled. I was asked to add two digits to another two digits in a problemit was somehow difficult. And I found bigger digits, say a three-digit number plus another three-digit number even more cumbersome and challenging to do mentally. It was all right to solve it on paper but my mind drew a blank when I was asked to do the same problem mentally. It was scary!

In our schools, mental mathematics is given due importance but there arent any fixed rules given about how to approach a problem orallybe it addition or division, for that matter. The oral system is taught nowhere because we give importance to step-by-step calculation. I dont refute that but I feel we must also be taught the oral way of maths, which comes in handy while doing the four operationsaddition, subtraction, multiplication and divisionmentally as you will see in this book.