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Head for Strasbourg, for the international mental arithmetic championships which took place on Saturday 10 June. The candidates, aged between 5 and 15, worked wonders thanks to a method straight from Asia.
The Mental Calculation World Cup took place in Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin), Saturday 10 June. A hundred children from a dozen countries had to carry out a maximum of mental calculations in a limited time. “We have students who manage up to 200 calculations, for 7 minutes”explains Hadija Khatsiev, from the Academy of Little Geniuses in Nice.
Mental math lessons
Between additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions, the participants chained the calculations at an astonishing speed. Idris Ismailov, a 13-year-old from Strasbourg, is one of the best in his category. He has been training for years every Wednesday with his friends. As others play sports or play music, they learn in mental arithmetic lessons to calculate with the Abacus, an age-old Asian abacus.