Jean Béland in Montreal is the new National Mental Math Champion!
There were three types of competitors at the September 15 National Mental Math Championship. There were people who can do math but had no hope of impressing anyone and who were participating just for fun. Then there were some extremely skilled individuals like 21-year-old Mireille Allard in Montreal and 16-year-old Alexandre Wen in Vancouver who are far, far beyond the amateur level. And then there were the aliens, three individuals who can quite outperform most calculators: Rodrigue Beaini, Marc Larocque and Jean Béland. Mister Beaini and Larocque both fouth bravely, but mister Béland still managed to come out on top in all three challenges. He’s now the National Mental Math Champion. Let’s see how long he can keep that title!
Apart from the official math championship, we also found time for one additional challenge. Can you quickly tell me what day of the week was October 23, 1743? 11-year-old Philippe Glaude can. And so can Jean Béland. At the very end of the mental math championship, those two competitors tried to answer as many of those questions as possible in 1 minute. Mister Béland successfully calculated the day of the week for 26 dates. All that in just 60 seconds. Stay tuned for an article explaining how he’s able to do that. Philippe Glaude calculated 2 dates correctly, which is still 2 more than 99.9% of the rest of the population.
The numbers in the scoreboard indicate the number of correct answers minus, in the case of multiplications and divisions, the penalties for errors. Competitors had two attempts for each of the main challenges presented. The scoreboard shows the result of each attempt, although only the best of those 2 counts for the final ranking. Championship points (CP) and final ranking calculations are explained at the bottom of this page.
