By Cheryl Lim

OVER the past 10 years, 420 people here have mastered an alternative way to solve mathematics sums at Vedic Method Education Centre.

This method, called Vedic maths - an Indian system compiled between 1911 and 1918 by Indian mathematician Sri Bharati Krsna Tirthaji - allows you to calculate answers to maths problems in a few seconds.

While students of the system will not be able to use it in school examinations, they can use it to double check their answers, said the centre's managing director, Mr John Sasayiah, 38.

About 40 per cent of his students are in Primary 6, he said. The rest include adults and junior-college students.

The youngest is a kindergarten pupil.

He set up the centre in 2000 and hired a maths professor from India to train its teachers, after discovering Vedic maths while on a work stint in Mumbai. An Indian national who -did not have more than high-school education- solved sums which Mr Sasayiah had been labouring over within seconds - using Vedic maths.

Madam Hannah Theodore, 35, a counsellor who took up Vedic maths, said: "I was intrigued by the techniques...

I intend to sign my six-year-old son up for the course and took it so that I could help him with it in future."

Vedic Method Education Centre is an exhibitor at Kidz Academy, an exhibition for parents and kids run by Singapore Press Holdings' Sphere Exhibits. It runs from today to Sunday at Suntec Singapore's Hall 603.

Admission is free.

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