Surat girl wins Mental Calculator Worldcup

An 11-year-old city girl brought smiles on faces of her family members and every Surti, by winning the World Mental Calculator Worldcup 2010 held in Germany this month. This is the first time that an Indian has won the competition, since its inception.

Priyanshi Somani is a class VI student and a resident of MD Park on Ghod-dod road in Surat. Somani has achieved fame by solving toughest questions of mathematics. Despite being the youngest participant, the oldest being 61 years, she won five awards in the competition held at University of Magdeburg in Germany, in June this year. Along with Priyanshi, 33 others participated in the competition, but she achieved success with her amazing performance.

She proved her talent by solving ten 6-digit square-root questions in 6 minutes and 51 seconds against the stipulated time of 15 minutes and took 4 minutes and 43 seconds from scheduled time of 10 minutes to answer 10 questions of adding 10 digit numbers. She became first to answer all questions related to calendar calculations.

"I am deeply interested in mathematics from the beginning and I love to solve difficult questions. I use the techniques which are easier and give quick results. This helps me in solving a majority of questions in minimum time and with good speed," Priyanshi said.

Apart from winning five trophies, Priyanshi was awarded two medals and a cash award of 500 euros. She now wants to win tougher mathematics competitions in future. Interestingly, Priyanshi won the competition without much preparation.

"She started preparing just one month before the competition. Unlike solving sums for hours, she used to practice only for 2-3 hours in the day and that too according to time available to her. She has good gasping power, which helped her in the competition," Deepesh Desai, Priyanshi's tutor, said.