Vedic Mathematics For All Ages: A Beginners’ Guide

Back of the Book

This book teaches you to calculate fast and in straight steps. The graphics and colors used in the book make it user friendly and easy to understand. The fun filled activities in each chapter make the process of learning Vedic Mathematics enjoyable for all ages. This book of Vedic Mathematics will help you to come confident and skilled mathematics without calculators.

I found the book to be extremely readable. The explanations are very lucid and I found the use of three colors of the explanations to be very helpful and innovative. The progression of chapters is also very well thought out. I would definitely recommend it to students of Vedic Mathematics.

Using different colors is certainly a very good idea the material is well organized and the style is good. It is a very nice book especially with the creative activities added.

Foreword

Mathematics, like all other sciences, developed through a staggered progression. Different civilizations, at different points in time, had their own approaches to the basic mathematical structures and it is only in the last two centuries or so that a somewhat codified approach to mathematics education has evolved in the world. Needless to say each civilization developed techniques to compute mathematical results in their own way. Some of them are elegant and beautiful and some of them could be of dubious value. The ancient Indian civilizations, especially the ones closely linked with Vedic heritage, had their own approach to computation and in recent years there has been a resurrection of interest in this branch of mathematics. Ms. Vandana Singhal has attempted to codify several useful results embedded in the ancient lore, in a form which is easily accessible to the children learning mathematics.

Many of the chapters deal with computations using simple techniques which will shorten the effort involved in the conventional approach. The price one pays, of course, is that one has to learn the tricks, memorize them and use the appropriate one for each problem. While one might think that this takes away the generality of the modern approach, it certainly has the element of charm and intrigue which children [and grown-ups! will find entertaining. Even working -out why many of these approaches lead to correct results is a valuable exercise by itself.

Ms. Singhal has presented these in a set of easy chapters with appropriate inter-relationship and structure. There are also exercises in each of the chapters which I thought would go a long way in keeping the reader amused. In these days, when students hardly memorize multiplication tables and start pressing the calculator buttons for every computation, this book will come as a refreshingly different approach towards enjoying mathematics and computation.

From a very early age I have been fascinated by numbers and the magic around them. Mathematical puzzles have always been of interest to me. Being a men san I always try to find logical explanations for thing and mathematics being so logical and creative has attracted me the most.

Seeing my interest in mathematics my late father-in-law Shri Shashikant Singhal presented me with a book on Vedic Mathematics. It was really astonishing to read it and to learn various short methods of calculations from it.

In school and college, I had seen my friends fear mathematics as they found it very difficult. I did not want my children to feel the same and it was then that I decided to teach Vedic methods of calculations to them. I could soon see the difference in them. Their competency improved not only in mathematics but also in other subjects.

Thereafter I started teaching these wonderful methods to other children as well, So far I have taught Vedic methods of calculations to more than .1000 students in India and in the U.S.A and observed the development it has made in them., Vedic methods gave them a more logical, creative and innovative approach towards any problem since in Vedic mathematics, we can solve one sum in many different ways.

When I conduct workshops for children they feel the solutions are like magic, but when they know the methods, it becomes Mathe—magic.

The joy that I saw in the eyes of children after learning Vedic methods inspired me to write this book. In my attempt to make the book user friendly, I have used different colors which will be visually appealing to children and there is significance to the colors that are used. I have used bold blue colour for the answers in each step and as carry over plays a very important part in mathematics, I have used blue colour for carry over.

The reader can also understand the steps by looking at the graphics alone even if he does not read the explanation of each step he can still enjoy the simplicity and beauty of the methods. As children always steer away from practice, I have added creative activities in each chapter to give them a good practice at the end of each chapter. They would not even realize how many sums they have done while doing these colorful activities.

The origami activities will enable the reader to visualize and make different geometric figures which will help them in geometry. However, this is a beginner's guide to Vedic mathematics and concepts on higher topics like Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus, Conics, Coordinate Geometry, Partial Fractions, Random Cube Roots and Others will be dealt with in my second book.

This book would not have been possible but for the efforts and help rendered by my family and friends.

I would especially like to thank Dr. Thanu Padmanabhan, a distinguished scientist, and Dean of IUCAA (Inter University Center of -Astronomy and Astrophysics), for taking time out from his extremely busy schedule and going through the entire book and writing an informative foreword to the book.

A special thanks to Prof. Kenneth Williams, International faculty of the.Academy of Vedic Mathematics based in London, U.K. who spared his time to go through the book and gave me valuable suggestions, to make the book more interesting.

A very special thanks to my dear friend Meena Harisinghania, for editing my book, without who's help this book would not have taken its present shape.

I would like to thank Dr. Narayan Desai, Executive Council member, Mensa India (Mensa, an organization about people of high IQ all over the world), •with whom I conducted several workshops for men sans.

I thank my friend Mr. Vivek Naidu for encouraging me to write this book and for his exemplary help from its initial stage. A special thanks to Mr. Gopal Ramabadran for all his help and support.

I thank my brother Mr. Vishal Garg and his beautiful wife Shilpa for designing the most appropriate cover page of this book. I thank my mother who always supported me in all that I wanted to do and taught me to always look ahead and not to look back.

This book would not have been possible without the inspiration and support of my husband Sharad and my two sons Shashwat aged 15, and Sarthak aged 11, on whom I conducted all the experiments regarding the methodology presented in this book. I would like to thank them for their valuable suggestions to make it more child friendly. I would also like to thank all those who have been directly or indirectly involved in making this book possible.

Introduction

Vedic Mathematics is an ancient system of Mathematics. It is a gift to the world and was formulated over many centuries by the ancient sages and rishis of India. It was rediscovered, from the Vedas between 1911 and 1918 by Jagadguru Swami Sri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji Maharaja.

Swamiji was the Shankaracharya of the Govardhan Math, Jaganath Puri as well as Dwarka, Gujrat (1884-1960). He was an exceptionally brilliant student and a great scholar of Sanskrit. At the young age of twenty one he passed M.A. in seven subjects including Science, Mathematics, English, History, and Philosophy simultaneously, securing the highest honors in all. Swamiji who was an accomplished Vedic scholar, wrote 16 volumes on Vedic mathematics comprehensively covering all branches of mathematics. As history goes they were all unfortunately mysteriously lost. Despite his failing health and weak eye-sight, Swamiji with his untiring capacity, will, and determination wrote a comprehensive book on Vedic Mathematics covering virtually all the aspects of the lost 16 volumes in one compact volume.

The Vedas are a store house of all knowledge needed by mankind. They are four in number and all the four Vedas namely Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda, consist of Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upvedas and Upanishads. Of these four, the first three namely Samhitas, Brahmanas and Aranyakas contain several thousand Mantras or Hymns, Ritual practices and their interpretations. Vedic mathematics forms the part of the Sthapatyaveda , an Upveda of Atharva Veda.

The term Vedic Mathematics refers to a set of sixteen mathematical formulae or sutras and their corollaries or sub sutras derived from the Vedic system. This speaks for its coherence and simplicity in handling mathematical problems. The sutras not only develop aptitude and ability ‘but also, nurture and develop our logical thinking and intelligence and also encourage innovativeness.

The sutras being single line phrases are easy to understand and remember. Although the sutras are in Sanskrit, the knowledge of Sanskrit language is not a must as they are very well translated. The sutras are so beautifully interrelated and unified, that any mathematical operation can be performed in many ways using different sutras and each sutra can be applied to solve many different mathematical operations.

Vedic Mathematics while nurturing our brain also helps us to relate to our past. A full concentration on it even helps us develop a spiritual bend within ourselves, for example a devotional hymn in praise of Lord Krishna, when decoded gives the value of pi up to 32 decimal places in Trigonometry.

These qualities make mathematics easy, enjoyable and flexible and their qualitative approach makes use of both parts of the brain. So versatile is this science that it has been incorporated in the educational syllabi of many countries worldwide. Even NASA scientists applied its principles in the area of artificial intelligence.

In the Vedic system ‘difficult' problems or huge sums can often be solved very quickly and calculations can be carried out mentally or involve one or two steps. Its simplicity leads to more creative, interested and intelligent pupils.

Parents have the misconception that children will get confused by new methods of calculations, but, on the contrary, they are able to correlate the methods learnt at regular school with the Vedic ones. As a result the student develops mathematical intelligence and gets more confidence in the subject. Students trained with the Vedic Mathematics advantage are often ready with the answers soon after the teacher finishes writing the problem on the board.

Vedic Mathematics is useful in preparing students for competitive examinations. It provides them with the “extra something” which helps them to be different. People argue, “Why should I learn Vedic mathematics in this age of calculators?” It may help them to remember that many big digit calculations can be done much faster by Vedic methods than by calculators. Calculators also have a limit to the number of digits they can hold. Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and many other topics can not be done using a calculator.

The real beauty and effectiveness of Vedic Mathematics cannot be fully appreciated without actually practicing the system. Without practice, Vedic methods will be soon forgotten since these methods are not taught in our regular schools, so we have to consciously take time out to practice the system and it is only then that we will be benefited by these wonderful, logical, and systematic and faster methods of solving the most complex sums. One can then see that it is an extremely refined and efficient mathematical system.

Content