MUMBAI, India — What is the square of 85? In an instant, a 17-year-old boy said without blinking, “7,225.”
Kamlesh Shetty had used a trick from a quaint concept called Vedic math, a compilation of arithmetic shortcuts believed to have been written by ancient Indians who lived centuries before Christ, during a glorious period in Indian history called the Vedic Age. Its math has now crawled into the 21st century to further Shetty’s dream of cracking a nasty engineering entrance exam.
I think we’ve come a ways in teaching a little more of an understanding of the way math works and some very interesting short cuts. By the time I retired from teaching the kids were having fun learning new ways to solve old problems. Why was it that way back when I went to school we had to do it using the one way taught and by rote, and to find a novel approach was cheating.