Meet the ‘human calculator’ who visualizes an abacus to find the answers

Growing up in Malaysia, Hua Wei Chan memorized multiplication charts. By elementary school, he realized he could do math faster than the other kids. Fast forward to today, and the Edmonton-based math whiz has just won his third straight National Mental Math Championship, which challenges competitors to answer as many questions as they can in five minutes — without a pencil, paper or calculator.

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