News and Resources for Competitive and Advanced Mental Calculation
Daniel Timms For today’s interview we visit the Netherlands to talk to Willem Bouman, a human calculator with more than 7 decades of experience with numbers! We first met in the 2012 World Cup in Gießen, and more recently while teaching at the Junior Mental Calculation World Cup in Bielefeld. At age 81, he is still active … Read more
When studying mental math in the classroom, or training for mental calculation competitions, the focus is usually on writing the answers to written questions. But in everyday life we encounter situations where the numbers to calculate are spoken to us, or generated in our head—this is verbal mental math or verbal mental arithmetic. Typical Situations Requiring … Read more
Human calculators typically train for extreme speed in certain categories of written mathematical operations, such as square roots, flash addition and prime factorization. But today, we’re thinking about how speed mental math can be useful—or amusing—in everyday situations. Whether you’re a beginner training mental math, or a world record-holder in calculation, it would be fun … Read more
The online competition in Mental Calculation was held on Saturday 15th August 2020, in partnership with the Mind Sports Olympiad, as an activity for human calculators of all ages, while the main events have been cancelled for a year. 29 competitors from 13 countries and aged between 10 and 57 years old took part, with … Read more
Human calculators around the world were training hard to compete in events such as the Mental Calculation World Cup, Memoriad, and the JMCWC. But then 2020 happened and all these events were cancelled 😞 So for the first time, and in partnership with the Mind Sports Olympiad, there is going to be an online event … Read more
While we have to wait until 2021 for the next time we can meet for mental calculation competitions, the Mind Sports Olympiad is running most of their usual events online during the month of August! In particular on the 15th August 2020, there will be an online mental math championship – open to all ages. … Read more
2020-Sep-20: Results are now available for all age categories The Junior Mental Calculation World Championship is held every year in Germany, organized by Caroline Merkel. Their official website has all details, past results, and how to register to attend this annual competition. While it is difficult to travel to events this year, the usual championship … Read more
Hello everyone! We’ve been looking forward to a busy calendar of mental calculation events this Summer and Autumn, with 4 major competitions in the space of 4 weeks. Unfortunately however, today I sadly have to announce the cancellation of all of these. This is of course due to the current pandemic and travel restrictions, which … Read more
We’ve seen before that the maximum speed the of human brain is about 60 bits per second, which of course is super slow compared an electronic calculator. However it’s not the only challenge that the human brain faces when performing difficult mental math! Imagine you were asked to to find out what the most popular … Read more
Hello everyone! It’s been quiet over the past few months in the world of competitive Mental Math – so here is a collection of updates from these months: Upcoming Competitions You’ll be aware of the disruption caused by the fight against coronavirus. As it stands, all of the competitions scheduled for this year are still … Read more