Western, central and northern Minnesota under windy, dry weather conditions 

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

By MILA KOUMPILOVA, St. Paul Pioneer Press


      ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — In his first algebra class last year,
Mani Chadaga slumped low in his front-row seat and pretended to
read his new textbook intently.


      Mani could make himself only so inconspicuous: He was, after
all, a second-grader in a junior high class at St. Paul's Capitol
Hill Gifted and Talented Magnet School.


      Soon, he was piping up with solutions to the teacher's questions
and standing before his stumped classmates, explaining how he
arrived at them. These days, as a third-grader juggling Algebra II
and geometry, he kneels in his seat, only a smidgen of his early
shyness and all his humility intact.


      "I am not the best at anything, so I want to improve at
everything," said the 8-year-old.


      Mani's parents and teachers are bracing for the task of keeping
things interesting for him in the coming years. To Vivek and Julia
Chadaga, his story shows how far schools have come in catering to
voracious learners like Mani. But it also shows that when restless
curiosity and true passion hold sway, age really is just a number.


      Mani and his parents can trace the beginnings of his fascination
with math to age 2 or 3, when he invented the Number Creatures. He
drew pages upon pages of these numbers with faces and
personalities, peering out the windows of their futuristic
skyscrapers in the galaxy Hexer.


      "He created a whole mythology around numbers," Julia said.

      A couple of years later, Mani went trick-or-treating dressed as
the number 4, baffling the neighbors. By 4, he readily added and
subtracted. By 5, he'd mastered the multiplication table.


      Kindergarten started with a strange test: He had to count to 10.
At that time, he could count to 1,000, and he did - all the time.


      "Put away your dishes," his parents would say.


      "Don't interrupt me," he replied. "I am counting."


      Both Mani's parents are word people, rather than number people:
Julia Chadaga teaches Russian at Macalester College. Vivek Chadaga
is a freelance editor.


      But they, too, were precocious learners, and now they were
worried about school. In rural Pennsylvania, one elementary teacher
would sit Vivek Chadaga in the back of the classroom with a copy of
Reader's Digest. His parents would field calls from other teachers:
"He's just bored out of his mind, and we have no idea what to do
with him."


      The Chadagas wanted Mani to have a more stimulating experience,
but it was also important to them that their son spend most of the
school day with his peers.


      At Capitol Hill, all students take a math test at the start of
the school year, which lands roughly half of them in a higher grade
for math classes. It's not uncommon for fifth- and sixth-graders to
climb the stairs to the school's second floor for math instruction
at Capitol Hill Junior High, said Assistant Principal Renee Jensen.


      Even so, what would happen to Mani was "really, really
unusual."


      Within weeks of starting first grade, Mani had moved up to
fourth-grade math. In the spring, he worked on the fifth-grade math
textbook in the evenings. Over the summer, he tackled the
sixth-grade textbook, at the rate of two to three hours at a time,
seven days a week. Vivek Chadaga helped out, but he says,
"Oftentimes, Mani was the one teaching me."


      That's how a nervous Mani stepped into that junior high algebra
class as a second-grader.


      "I felt proud, but a little embarrassed, too," he recalls. "I
felt like maybe I was too far ahead in math."


      The shyness Mani felt that day quickly faded. He kept up
effortlessly, and teacher Alex Ford started assigning him more
challenging problems. In the spring, Ford tasked a dozen or so
advanced students in the class with deriving the quadratic formula,
the stuff of Algebra II. Mani took the lead.


      "He literally taught the rest of them the entire problem,"
Ford said, adding, "He could stand in front of a room full of
eighth-graders and describe the solution to problems with poise and
confidence and perfect mathematical reasoning."


      Last year and again this fall in high-school-level Algebra II
and geometry, Mani eased into the company of the older kids.
Teachers and students say he has a way of showing what he knows -
without showing off. His junior high classmates still talk about
his quick solution to the prime factorization of 1,001 - a problem
some in the class still mull over.


      "Everyone goes to Mani for answers," said eighth-grader August
Morin.


      "He's probably smarter than all of us," added Joey Gagne, an
eighth-grader in Mani's Algebra II class.


      As Mani waded into the more abstract world of algebra, his dad
says, he started asking insistent questions about the purpose of
math. Together, they devised excuses to unleash math onto the
world. On the playground swing, they spoke about formulas to
calculate its acceleration. In their backyard, Mani figured out a
way to use his shadow to calculate the height of an old oak tree.
Then, there was the Monkey-Moon-Toffee Challenge: Mani had to
calculate the shortest route to get a monkey on the moon. Toffee
was the reward.


      "I think we used the circumference equation," Mani said. "I
wonder if I would get anything for solving this now."


      Julia Chadaga says math has become a bonding experience for Mani
and his dad, who readily admits Mani is out of his league these
days. Mani's favorite number is 41 - a prime number, for one thing,
but also his dad's age.


      "I am not thinking about math every single day, every single
hour, every single minute," says Mani.


      He has written about 100 sonnets, on nouns, soccer ("I never
would have thought about success/If I had never played my very
best"), his little sister, bad haircuts and a frog named Blep. He
recently researched patent law on the Internet in preparation for
upcoming inventions - say, a teleportation device or an
invisibility cloak. He also researched and wrote a four-page
single-spaced paper on hot peppers, including a daring kitchen
experiment that had him chugging glasses of milk.


      "No matter what Mani does, he always takes it to the next
level," said Heidi Geimer, his third-grade teacher. With weekly
writing homework, he also turns in chapters of a novel, she said:
"He sets his own personal standards."


      Mingling with the older kids has Mani wondering about his
future. He could be a striker for Barcelona's soccer team, a
professional chess player, an inventor.


      "There are so many possibilities," he said. "I haven't even
found the mathematics I am the most interested in."


      Meanwhile, his school and parents are looking ahead, too.


      This year in Algebra II, he only shows up for "a little
refresher here and there," said teacher Kyle Warner. Next year,
he'll likely start pre-calculus. The year after, he might travel to
Central High School for more math. As a sixth-grader, he could
start a calculus course through the University of Minnesota's
Talented Youth Mathematics Program, an honors-level college-credit
alternative for middle and high school students.


      Even so, said Scott Gilbert, the head of the program, "He'd
still be topped out by ninth grade and have no work left to do."


      Mani reminds Gilbert of fellow Capitol Hill mathematician Martin
Camacho, who wrapped up the Talented Youth program several years
ago at age 12 and enrolled full time at the U the following year.


      Geimer hopes the school system will find ways to continue to
push Mani. In any case, she doesn't doubt he will keep pushing
himself. And he will stay grounded, she said: "With Mani, you know
in your heart of hearts he's going to grow up and do good for the
world."

Gallery

Education News

"He's probably smarter than all of us," his middle school classmates say of eight-year-old Mani Chadaga, who's currently taking geometry and Algebra II.

For young math phenom, age is just another number

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox