Bangalore:
It’s double delight for Bangalore as two eight-year-olds from a city school grabbed first rank at the International Olympiad of Mathematics with a perfect score.
Adit Chatterjee and Rutajit Bharadwaj, students of Class III in Vidyashilp Academy, won the competition outperforming thousands of their counterparts from over 3,000 schools in 14 countries. The Olympiad has two rounds, testing students’ competence and proficiency in Mathematics. Their mental ability and reasoning skills are also on test. The competition is conducted for each grade separately. Questions are objective with multiple choices.
“Maths is fun to do… it’s kind of creative. You don’t have time to get distracted. I love decimals and fractions. You’ve to rack your brains for that,” said Adit. But ask him the humdrum question on what he wants to become when he grows up — “I want to become an Olympic swimmer!” is his apt and unexpected answer.
Adit loves swimming, said his father, Amit Chatterjee. “Getting him to practise Maths was very challenging. We used to do Maths drills while driving to the pool,” he said.
So what does the other wizard, Rutajit, want to do when he grows up? “I want to become an astronaut. I want to go to the space. The planets will look beautiful, the Sun will be bright, stars will shine and I want to land on the Moon!” Well, there’s no stopping Rutajit when you ask him about his future plans.
“I like Maths because it makes you smart. You can use the skills in your daily life,” the boy said.
“He was very excited about the competition as he loves Maths. He worked out sample papers and that further developed his interest. We have been telling him that if he’s good in Maths, it’ll be easier to analyze and apply logic even in daily life,” said Sham Prasad KN, his father, a software engineer.
Kalpana Mohan, principal, Vidyashilp Academy said: “Both the kids are intelligent, not because they came first in a competition but because we find them extremely active in extra-curricular activities that the school offers.”
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / Home> City> Bangalore / TNN / April 05th, 2012