17-year-old is S'pore's fastest in mental multiplication

When Hwa Chong Institution student Wee Sue Yin was four years old, instructors at her mental arithmetic enrichment class discovered she had an innate ability to understand numbers.

By the age of six, she had been crowned world champion in mental arithmetic in the Mental Arithmetic Online International Competition in Taiwan. Now, she has been recognised by the Singapore Book of Records (SBOR) as the nation's fastest in mental multiplication.

The 17-year-old prodigy set three multiplication records in the SBOR on April 2.

These were for fastest 2x1-digit multiplication in five minutes (256 correct answers), fastest calculation of squares in five minutes (74 correct answers), and fastest solving of 100 multiplication problems on trivia website Sporcle (4min 3sec).

At those speeds, the time it took her to solve a question was far shorter than the time it would take to key the figures into a calculator.

"I was fascinated by how fast Sue Yin managed to calculate, how fast her fingers moved and how fast she scribbled the answers," said Mrs Linda Yuan, 36, a teacher at Hwa Chong Institution and one of the witnesses at the record-breaking event.

Sue Yin's talent for numbers is supported by an affinity for the abacus, an ancient calculating tool that she learnt to use.

"I do feel a strong sense of connection to the abacus," she said.

Her mother enrolled her only child in abacus and mental arithmetic classes at the Classical Mental Arithmetic (CMA) institute when she was four years old, and that early exposure to the abacus led to her unique way of thinking about and mentally solving mathematical problems.

"First, you'd start off using the tool. Soon, you'd get an image of the abacus in your mind where you can calculate by just imagining someone, or yourself, moving their hands. After some time, the abacus in your mind just becomes an image etched in there, and it can move by itself," Sue Yin said. "When I was young, I thought it was normal to calculate the way I did, only to realise it was actually quite rare."

She went for classes at CMA Singapore twice a week and was encouraged to represent the institution at numerous national and international Olympiads, which saw her winning awards early in life.

But a serious case of pneumonia when she was 10 years old led to a series of hospitalisations, operations and leave from school for nearly half a year. She said that when she was hospitalised, a long needle inserted into her hand prevented her from writing.

"I couldn't do any of the work or practices I wanted to do... It made things very hard. But since I wasn't able to write, I just did the problems in my head. I think that when one eye goes blind, the other gets stronger, so it turned out to be a blessing in disguise," she said.

Her record-breaking feats this year were motivated by a drive to prove and improve herself. "I had this ambition, this competitiveness. I very much wanted to be faster than the clock, to improve my timing... I've always felt a need in me to be faster and better. I wanted to show myself I could do it," she said.

While the A-level student is now focusing on her studies in the Chinese Language Elective Programme, she said she looks forward to breaking more records for different maths operations such as addition, subtraction and division, as well as the ones she currently holds.