Everything Vedic in ‘Vedic Maths’ - The Hindu

Everything Vedic in ‘Vedic Maths’ - The Hindu: "Vedic Maths is concerned with a universal structure of Maths revealed through a personal approach to problem-solving and other fields of human activity. It is described by a small collection of aphorisms called sutras. Sutras express naturally occurring mental processes by which mathematical problems can be solved with the least effort. Vedic Maths does not advocate the sole use of blanket methods through which students can reduce problems to merely mechanical responses to given stimuli. Instead, it encourages an intelligent and holistic approach — one that engenders reason and develops strategic thinking. There are blanket methods as well as special case methods. If you find that a problem can be solved by an easier or different method from what is commonly taught, then that is used as a valid method, even if the problem is solved just by inspection. The sutras describe such principles and methods.

For example, if you want to add 324 and 199, an easy approach is to add 200 instead of 199 to 324 and take off one, resulting in 523. This is a naturally occurring mental method and uses the fact that 199 is deficient from 200 by one. Such special cases are not normally taught but most people will naturally adopt them by understanding numbers. This comes under the pithy sutra, deficiency. This example shows that there are often simple methods which follow the path of least action and reflects Sir Isaac Newton’s observation, “Nature abhors the pomp of superfluous causes.”"



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