14-year-old ‘human calculator’ from India breaks 6 Guinness World Records in a day

A ‘human calculator’ from India broke six Guinness World Records in one day at the age of just 14 years. Last year, Maharashtra's Aaryan Shukla set the record for the fastest time to mentally add 50 5-digit numbers in front of a live audience. If this was not impressive enough, he achieved the feat in just 25.19 seconds – coming up to approximately one addition every half a second.

He was then invited to Dubai by Guinness World Records and challenged to solve the toughest mental calculation ever attempted. And in just one day, he broke six records: Fastest time to mentally add 100 4-digit numbers, add 200 4-digit numbers, 50 5-digit numbers, divide a 20-digit number by a 10-digit number, multiply 10 sets of 2 5-digit numbers and multiply 10 sets of 2 8-digit numbers.

Guinness World Records also talked to Aaryan and his family about his daily routine. “Daily practice is one of the important aspects to prepare for competitions, […] so I practice for about 5-6 hours daily," he said.

A maths prodigy

Aaryan also explained how the calculations occur in his brain. “A lot of things in mental calculations happen in a flash of a second, so I cannot say what happens inside my head, […] I just do it naturally. Basically, it’s so fast that you can’t think, you just need to do the calculations," he said, adding that yoga helps him keep calm and focused.

His mother said that he was good with numbers since he was little. "He enjoyed studying and playing with numbers. At the age of 6 he started the practice of mental calculation, and he was very good, so we started doing some research on this. At the age of 8 we went for an international competition and he won medals and trophies, which were great achievements," she said.

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