As a young child, Aaryan Shukla’s parents learned that he was good with numbers. Like, really good. Now he’s 14, and he recently set six new Guinness World Records in a single day – all for math problems that most people would need a calculator to solve.
Aaryan lives in the Indian state of Maharashtra. His parents knew he was good with numbers as a child. But around age six, he began doing math problems – in his head. His parents found that interesting – neither of them had any special math talents. So they started looking into mental calculation.
It turned out that lots of people around the world enjoy doing difficult math problems in their heads. Not only that, but there are contests focused on these mental calculations. At these contests, people might add lots of four-digit or five-digit numbers in their heads, or they might multiply or divide large numbers.
(Source: Aaryan Shukla .)
Some people even calculate the “square roots” of large numbers. (If you multiply the square root of a number by itself, it will give you the original number. For example, the square root of 9 is 3, since 3 x 3 = 9.) Without a calculator, most people would struggle to tell you the square root of 65,947. But someone like Aaryan can quickly tell you that the answer is 256.80148. No paper. No calculator.
When Aaryan was eight, his parents entered him in some international mental calculation contests, and he began winning. He enjoyed traveling and representing his country. And somewhere along the way, people began calling him a “Human Calculator”.
(Source: Aaryan Shukla .)
In 2022, Aaryan went to the Mental Calculation World Cup in Germany. He didn’t win all of the contests, but he was the overall winner, and set three new contest records along the way. He was only 12.
At the next Mental Calculation World Cup in September of 2024, he won all five of the main contests and was the overall winner again.
A year ago, Aaryan set a Guinness World Record by correctly adding up 50 five-digit numbers in just 25.19 seconds. Each number flashed on a screen for a half a second, and Aaryan added them all up. “It’s so fast that you can’t think,” he says. “You just need to do the calculations.”
(Source: Aaryan Shukla .)
Now Guinness reports that Aaryan has done something even more amazing – he set six new world records in one day. Here are the records:
Fastest time to mentally…
• add 100 four-digit numbers – 30.9 seconds
• add 200 four-digit numbers – 1 min 9.68 seconds
• add 50 five-digit numbers – 18.71 seconds
• divide a 20-digit number by a ten-digit number (set of ten) – 5 minutes, 42 seconds
• multiply two five-digit numbers (set of ten) – 51.69 seconds
• multiply two eight-digit numbers (set of ten) – 2 minutes, 35.41 seconds
Aaryan’s math skills are amazing. But they don’t come without effort. Aaryan says he practices several hours a day, on top of his schoolwork. But he also makes time for other things. He plays video games, reads adventure and mystery books, and likes to play cricket.
Did You Know…?
If you give Aaryan any date between 1600 and 2099, he can quickly tell you what day of the week the date falls on. If you’d like to see the sorts of mental math problems that Aaryan does, and also get a peek at how he practices, you can visit the training section of the website for the mental calculation organization that Aaryan helped start.