Anand Mahindra's math trick tweet leaves Shah Rukh Khan amused

For most people, Mathematics is a sequence straight out of a nightmare, where numbers turn into monsters to set up a web of seemingly unsolvable dread.

A Bihar school teacher is making waves after her video teaching Maths in an innovative form has gone viral.

In the video, she demonstrates how someone could calculate the multiplication of 9 using his or her fingers.

Her innovation and activity-based approach caught the attention of industrialist Anand Mahindra and actor Shah Rukh Khan who showered immense praise for the ingenious methodology adopted by a government middle school teacher Ruby Kumari in Bihar’s Banka district.

In the video, she could be seen teaching tiny tots how to use their fingers as a calculator.

“Your finger is your calculator. And with its help, you can easily calculate the multiplication of 9x4,” she says as she asks one of her students to demonstrate the methodology.

“To multiply 9x4, hold your fourth finger on the left hand and count the numbers on its left, which is: 3. Now count the digits to the right of that finger. It’s 6. So, 9x4=36,” says Ruby.

She demonstrates the same methodology for multiplying 9x5 and then again, 9x6. Each time the calculation is done through fingers, the tiny tots could be seen brimming with enthusiasm.

“Is it not easy?” she asks them, and pat comes the reply: “Yes, Ma’m.”

Actor Shah Rukh Khan too was highly impressed. “Can’t tell you how many of my life’s issues this one simple calculation has solved, wow!. ….”, the actor tweeted.

The teacher hogging the limelight was all thankful to the celebrities. “I thank Shah Ruh Khan and Anand Mahindra Ji for liking my video and retweeting it,” said Ruby.

The Director of Mass Education, Vinodanand Jha, too praised Ruby and hoped “her innovation and involvement should work as a source of inspiration for others.”

The video, which has since gone viral, evoked similar reactions from other Twitter users to the trick.

Astonished after watching the video, first posted on the ‘Teachers of Bihar’ Facebook page and later shared on Twitter, Mahindra tweeted: “Whaaat? I didn’t know about the clever shortcut. Wish she had been my teacher. I probably would have been a lot better at the subject.”

Many people have retweeted it with some saying “it was interesting approach to involve children by making learning fun.”