7-year-old Filipino math whiz shows amazing skills in ‘Little Big Shots’

MANILA, Philippines – Most people use calculators to solve mathematical equations especially when it involves square roots, exponents, and other processes, but that’s not the case for a young Filipino math genius who recently surprised Steve Harvey with his amazing skills. 

In an episode of US show “Little Big Shots” aired on Sunday, March 18, 7-year-old Miguel Secillano left the audience in awe as he tried to solve complicated math problems.

Miguel showed how he was able to find the 5th root of a 7-digit number in less than 10 seconds. A 5th root is a number you have to multiply 5 times by itself to get the original number. (READ: Genius with a heart, intelligence with a conscience)

But what really caught the attention of the audience was when  Miguel successfully solved 5×5 Magic Square. In this recreational number game, you need to place a unique number in each box such that the sum of the entries of any row, any column, or any main diagonal are equal. In Miguel’s case, it should be 265.

As of posting, his video uploaded on the Little Big Shots Facebook page has now almost 300,000 views.

It was not the first time the young prodigy caught attention of netizens.

A video of him solving the volume of a cube also went viral in 2014. In that video, he is shown solving the problem loudly as if he were teaching a class. 

Miguel’s parents are both Filipinos but have lived in the US for the past 8 years. His mom is from Cebu and his dad is from Albay. 

In a Rappler article in 2014, Philip, his dad, said that Miguel could count to 100 at age 2. Miguel’s dad also said that when his was tested for intelligence, the result showed that he was “gifted.”

His parents sent his test result over to MENSA – an international organization of people with high IQ – to apply for membership. Members of MENSA have intelligence test scores above the 98th percentile. – with a report from Justine Balane / Rappler.com