Gurgaon resident plans to break own Guinness record

Vikas Sharma, 29, who is a native of Gurgaon and a Guinness World Record holder for ‘calculating most large number roots in one minute’, plans to break his own record on November 28 at Sector 4 in the city.

Vikas Sharma, 29, who is a native of Gurgaon and a Guinness World Record holder for ‘calculating most large number roots in one minute’, plans to break his own record on November 28 at Sector 4 in the city.

Vikas (left) says mathematics is easy for him. He realised at a very tender age that he could do more with numbers.(HT Photo)

Vikas’ current record is 12 large number roots calculated in one minute, breaking the existing record of eight roots held by Chen Ranran of China. He became one of the quickest human calculators in the world with his Guinness record.

He set the record at an event organised by the IMA Mental Arithmetic Academy at the Accord Metropolitan Hotel in Chennai on January 3, 2015. The Mental Arithmetic Academy provided the questions in a sealed envelope before the attempt.

This time he will challenge his own record where he solved roots of numbers containing digits between 20 and 51 with the roots ranging between 17 and 50.

Vikas, who is a software engineer, works as a solution architect in ClickSoftware in Houston, US.

Vikas said that mathematics was easy for him and he realised at a very tender age that he could do more with numbers. He has been pursuing mental mathematics for the last 14 years.

“In January, I had to take out the roots of four 20-digit numbers, four 25-digit numbers, three 30-digit numbers and one 51-digit, which I successfully completed in a minute. This time I will calculate more than 12 numbers in a minute to break my old record,” Vikas, said.

Vikas had devised a tabular method for calculating large roots in 2008 that helped him win a place in the India Book of Records in 2009. He was able to calculate the fifth root of a 15-digit number in seven seconds.

Vikas also earned a place the Limca Book of Records for the fastest calculation of roots of large numbers in one minute.

He also received an honorary doctorate in world record breaking from World Records University, in the UK.