10-year-old Ukrainian wins international mental math competition, besting 230 students

Denys Kosaruk, a ten-year-old Ukrainian student, won the yearly World Mental Arithmetic competition held in Moldova.

The student bested 230 participants aged 9-14, the press release says.

Mental math is a way of solving examples and performing other calculations in your mind. Students from 18 countries attended the competition to complete all tasks in 8 minutes.

During this time, Denys had to solve as many examples as possible out of a hundred. Points were awarded based on the number and accuracy of the problems solved.

He has been studying for only a year and a half, while some participants have four or even six years of mental arithmetic training behind them. This is an impressive result, which we are extremely pleased about, said Victoria Kosaruk, the boy's mother.

Denys is a fifth-grader who has been studying at a private school specializing in mental arithmetic for over a year and a half. He spends about an hour a day practicing. Denys shared his dreams of becoming an IT specialist later.

Three young Ukrainians took first place (Volodymyr Savych, Kyrylo Savych, and David Romanchuk), four took second place (Demian Mykhailiuk, Kamila Kaminska, Anastasia Bunechko, and Vasylina Kapustynska) and another student took third place (Bohdana Dranitska).

Ukraine can be proud of its young generation. Previously, Denys Mozok, a student of the National Aviation University, won first place in the S4A class, a model of gliders with an accelerator for the duration of the flight.

A Ukrainian graduate of the Ivano-Frankivsk Lyceum, Diana Zazubyk, won first place at the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad.