Even his mom didn’t know her teenage son was a math wiz. His geometry teacher didn’t have a clue, either, until recently. His classmates were also in the dark.
Then one day in November, Chaz Barnes was seen in math class squaring numbers from 1 to 100 in his head. After that he was on to multiplying any two numbers 1 to 100 together in his head.
What’s more, the Evergreen Park Community High School student does the calculations fast.
“I can do the math before people put their calculators on,” said Barnes, a junior who attends a geometry class for students with special needs. “It’s really exciting.”
Chaz said he’s been practicing the skill for months, and now it comes easy. He also enjoys the calculations. At home, he’s partial to riding his bike or scooter, skateboarding or, in the winter, playing in snow. He hopes to attend college.
“I like to divide numbers and multiply,” he said. “I do that because I like to think about numbers.”
That talent has awed Patrick Doran, Chaz’s geometry teacher. The class had been working on the Pythagorean theorem, which requires squaring numbers, when everyone noticed Chaz’s feat.
“He came back and said he knew how to square all the numbers in his head,” said Doran. “He hasn’t gotten one wrong yet.”
Doran, who has 9 students in the class, said he had never seen anyone calculate numbers in their head like Chaz. He was so impressed with this ability, that he called Chaz’s mom to see if she knew about it. She had no idea.
“He’s just got this gift for multiplying numbers,” Doran said, adding Chaz had gotten even faster at it in recent weeks. “It’s definitely not a teachable skill or I’d be teaching all my students.”
But it’s not all work for Chaz, according to Doran.
“He’s having fun at it,” said Doran, who nominated Chaz for a school award. “When he finds something he likes, he gets really, really in to it.”
Heaven Jefferson, a sophomore in the class who is friends with Chaz, said at first she thought he might be memorizing answers.
“When I found out he did it in his head, I said he must be fast because he does it in 30 seconds or less,” she said.
Heaven said she admired Chaz for his math smarts and his humor.
“We’ll be in class solving problems and he’ll just saying something random and it will be funny,” she said.
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Doran, the geometry teacher, said he still can’t figure out how Chaz does it.
“It’s been keeping me up at night,” he said.
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.