Recently I read in a newspaper article how some Indian schools are reintroducing Vedic maths to the syllabus. The benifits apparently are lightning-fast calculations in your head, and when you get to a more advanced stage, ability to do things you can't do in Euclidic geometry, for example. Now this could sound all airy-fairy new-age-a-dairy, but these are the guys who gave us Arabic numerals, decimal notation, the number 0, sine and cosine, so I decided to check it out.
I went to a bookstore (excellent selection in Kathmandu) and bought myself an easy introduction to Vedic Maths and Max Mueller's India, What Can It Teach Us? (highly recommended, btw). The Vedic Maths book was printed by Motilal Banarsidass Publishing, the company my Mum went to work for in India originally. It turns out she went to do a translation of Max Mueller's book. Wierd.
Anyway, here's lesson one:
In Vedic maths all arithmetical operations are carried out from left to right. This makes it easier for getting ballpark figures sooner rather than later (you don't end up with the last digit first), and because we read numbers from left to right.
To multiply numbers by a single number:
237 x 2
2 by 2 is 4
2 by 3 is 6
2 by 7 is 14
In your head you remember the results as you go, so the answer is:
4, 46, 474 (carry the one).
Addition:
Again, from left to right:
187 + 444
5
5,12 = 62
62,11 = 631
That's it for today, go do some calculations in your head.
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6 comments:
Oh, but that is how I natrualy do it anyway. I was expecting something over my head.
It gets over your head (well, mine), but let's just start with the basics.
I went to India in early 1972 to work for Motilal Banarsidass Indological Publishers in Delhi.
The company planned to publish a new edition of Max Muller's 'Sacred Books of the East' and I was to help in editing the English translation.
The project didn't eventuate - at anyrate, not then - and I edited English translations of other books instead. Alexander's sharp eyes have picked up that his Vedic maths book was published by Banarsidass, but I wasn't involved with it, or with Muller's 'India, What Can It Teach Us?
One book I was given to edit was Rajneesh's 'Who Am I?'. In fact, I rewrote the English translation for the 1973 edition. Maybe, just maybe, I have the dubious honour of helping Rajneesh along the road to celebrity (before the fall).
I think I'm gonna outsource all of my mathematical calculations to India.
Hey, congrats on the Cats. Could be another big weekend for you guys... I just hope it's at least 89-esque in its closeness. We've not had one close final this year.
You would be better off - by learning this method at
http://www.speed-math.com/
cheers
from Andre
Legana Tas.
Hi Andre,
Yep I had a look at that while I was looking into Vedic Maths. They've both got good points and could be combined quite well. I'll show some cool tricks soon :)
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