I've always been critical of how our media overrates him. It's bad for Malaysian children. We keep shouting "Maths genius, Maths genius!". Kids tend to believe that you either have the Maths genes, or you don't. This is utterly destructive and uncalled for, and it speaks volumes about how Malaysians generally perceive what it takes to be good in something: You either have it or you don't. The Russians, Chinese and Japanese certainly don't have this view on Maths. They know that it takes a considerable amount of work to be good in Maths. Meanwhile, Malaysians sit by the side, and merely exclaim: I'm bad at Maths.

Back to Adi Putra. His formulas aren't your usual Maths formulas. They are arithmetic tricks, which have been known to ancient mathematicians. The Chinese, Hindus, Arabs, Babylonians all had their own algorithms to do arithmetic. Higher Mathematics, or Mathematics itself, is bigger than arithmetic!

Terrence Tao was a child prodigy (Maths). He went for his degree in a lesser known, small university, Flinders University. Look where he is now.

Meanwhile, Adi Putra blames the government for not acknowledging and supporting his talent. This is nonsense. You have the internet for goodness' sake, if you want to learn higher Mathematics you can do it for free.