4 ms·
In my opinion the best abacus you can get is the 5 beads per rod one (soroban). The 7 bead one pictured in the article header is slower to work with (classic s
by partycoder 10y ago
In my opinion the best abacus you can get is the 5 beads per rod one (soroban).
The 7 bead one pictured in the article header is slower to work with (classic suanpan).
The 10 bead one used in the west for kids may be good to have an intuition about quantities, but for practical use it is the worst.
You can get a soroban, learn the basic algorithms, then use an soroban drilling app to gain speed. With practice, you can exploit muscle memory and stop using a physical abacus.
The abacus provides a workable mental model for numeric operations. In contrast, calculators are opaque machines. They take inputs and provide an answer but do not expose their inner workings in a way that can be assimilated and learned by the user.
- bogle 10y agoI have a couple of soroban at home. One has lovely, bright, colourful beads to attract the children. They are attracted, they try to use them as roller-skates. Which soroban drilling app have you used?
- partycoder 10y agoThis Android one is free and very responsive. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=br.net.btco.soroban&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=br.net.btco.so... There are Youtube videos explaining the algorithms. A basic exercise is just counting, and then do a countdown. And then try to do it as quickly as possible. Then do it in intervals of 2 rather than 1, then 3, and so on.
- cnlevy 10y agoFlash Anzan is impressive for a westerner : https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2012/oct/29/mathematics https://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numb...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- digi_owl 10y agoI had to look things up, but once i found an example of numbers notation on the 5 bead variant i can see what you mean. Effectively you have something akin to a binary watch, where you move the top bead to indicate if the bottom 4 beads are 0 to 4 or 5 to 9.
- slantyyz 10y ago>> The 7 bead one pictured in the article header is slower to work with (classic suanpan) When I was growing up in the early seventies, my dad still occasionally used a suanpan to do calculations for his business. As printing calculators got cheaper, it eventually got retired (I have it now, but don't use it) but he did teach me how to use it. It does not take very long to get good/fast at using it, at least for stuff like adding up a pile of receipts.