Kenneth Williams at a Vedic math class in Bhawanipur Gujarati Education Society. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha

Have you ever tried to do not-so-simple calculations in your head? Chances are you had to either reach for a piece of paper or worse, a calculator. But there is a method that lets you develop high speed calculation skills — without external aid.

“Vedic mathematics gives you access to high speed calculation skills,” claimed Gaurav Tekriwal, president of The Vedic Maths Forum, India. To familiarise students with the skills, the forum invited Vedic math guru professor Kenneth Williams to hold workshops in city schools earlier this month.

“Vedic mathematics has 16 sutras, which were taken from ancient texts by Swami Bharat Krishna Tirtha in the early 20th century,” said Williams. How simple are the sutras? “Vertically and crosswise,” says one sutra, “By one more than the one before” goes another. “It’s so vague that people are apt to reject it,” he admitted. The 62-year-old Englishman has dedicated his life’s research to understand how the sutras form the basis of mathematics.

Tekriwal cited the power of Vedic mathematics by multiplying 98 with 97 in seconds. “The trick is to subtract both figures from 100. The resultant figures, 02 and 03, are to be multiplied. The answer, 06, gives you the last two digits of the final answer. Then you have to subtract crosswise — either 03 from 98 or 02 from 97. The answer has to be the same — 95, in this case. This gives you the first two digits of the final answer which is 9506.”

Williams believes people are getting lazier and increasingly dependant on the calculator. “Children have marvellous memories. But they are not being stretched. Doing calculations mentally also increases one’s mental agility. In any case, numbers are mental concepts. Writing them down takes them to the realm of a different faculty.”

In his interactions with students in Calcutta, Williams dealt with subtraction, recurring decimals, converting fractions to decimals, squaring and cubing — all using Vedic math methods.

But he felt that for the system to gain acceptance, teachers, rather than students, needed to be trained. “For that, we are devising an on-line teaching course,” Tekriwal said.