He is adding with 4 at a time and is spending about 15-20 seconds per problem. He finished in 196, making him faster than Jornet Sanz. Mental Additions 10 Digits 10 Rows Memoriad Software - YouTube
Sreenidhi Neermanvi is a young mental calculator from India, who has competed a few times in the last few years, nost notably getting joint bronze in the under-15s category of the Junior Mental Calculation Online Championship 2020.
He’s fairly good. Marc Jornet Sanz is the current world record holder at 8×8 multiplication, but not the fastest at additions.
Sreenidhi almost certainly uses the soroban (mental abacus) to represent number, and is doing 4 or 5 digits at a time. This technique is popular in Asia. The current fastest I think is Jeonghee Lee, and she does columns of 3 digits.
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I have heard of a lot of competitors that have had success with soboran, and it appears that the best soboran users are better than the best alternative method users. For example, Jeonghee Lee, Rinne, etc. Do you recommend learning the method, or am I too old? I am 15.
I would say you’re too old, and I’m not being sarcastic! The only people who seem to have success with it have started when they are very young indeed. Yusnier Viera (world record holder for calendar, inventor of hectoc) learned it at age 30+ and is quoted as saying it’s the hardest thing he’s ever learned.
The good news is that as long as you practise doing calculation without subvocalization, you can get to the same speeds as soroban users in basically everything except for Flash Anzan, plus you’ll probably develop a better number sense. It’s notable that the fastest people at multiplication (Freddis Reyes, Jeonghee Lee, Samuel Engel, Marc Jornet Sanz) don’t use soroban (except for Jeonghee Lee).
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This leads me to the general question what the benefits of the soroban are. For most types of calculations, non-soroban calculators can reach the same speed than soroban calculators, so why are they faster at Flash Anzan, is it because they practise it much more or because the soroban has certain benefits? Soroban calculators do most of their calculations subconsciouly, which lets them concentrate only on the numbers shown on the display, maybe this makes it easier. But I think the top non-soroban calculators also have automatized their additions in some way. For example, Marc Jornet Sanz is equally fast at multiplications, so he has to be equally fast at additions as well.
Do top multiplication calculators calculate additions like in 189+26 = 200+26-11 = 215 or do they calculate it in a digit-by-digit based way using tens complements like in 189+26 = 209+6 = 219-4 = 215? This would be similar to what soroban users do, it is suggested in Edward Stoddard‘s book and, although it seems more complicated at the beginning, it could lead to a comparable degree of automation and strengthen the visual number memory as one has to concentrate on one digit at a time still „seeing“ the other digits.
For some categories, soroban calculators have achieved much better results than others, especially in divisions and square roots. For both categories, Kaloyan Geshev is an exception as I believe he doesn‘t use a soroban (does he?). Probably this is due to the method as the Indians use their own methods they don‘t share and it seems like Kaloyan also uses something special, because any other competitor is far behind him and the Indians. I wrote a post on square roots in another thread, but no one answered, so seemingly nobody knows anything about it.
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@SquareRoot744 Kayolan does not use soboran. I believe he uses traditional methods for most events and for others he just has the savant ability. You can ask his mother for more details @26101
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