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Do you still count on your fingers?
- wryoak 2y agoI have to count on my fingers to calculate time and dates. Dunno why, but I can’t get it right otherwise
- Tijdreiziger 2y agoOff-by-one errors?
- wryoak 2y agoExcept on leap years
- salesynerd 2y agoI still count days in months using my fingers. :)
- finger 2y agoI still use the knuckles method I learned as a kid.
- timonoko 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckle_mnemonic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckle_mnemonic
- adzm 2y agoI still use this all the time
- marcosdumay 2y agoWhen my hands are occupied, I visualize the knuckles and count them. It's still easier than remembering the calendar.
- ggm 2y agoYes. And, I count in binary to stop myself speaking in bullshit meetings.
- mikemitchelldev 2y agoIt's a useful communication gesture if the topic of conversation calls for it.
- lagrange77 2y agoI even sing the 'abcdefg' song to infer letter sort order.
- arp242 2y agoI generally lose track somewhere after P.
- 082349872349872 2y agoI generally lose track somewhere after "cookie monster": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYIRO97dhII https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYIRO97dhII
- garaetjjte 2y agoFor long time I thought that I don't know alphabetical order. Unless I realized it's on telephone numpad, and I know that.
- happytoexplain 2y agoI do this too. I can also start at L if my intuition tells me the letter(s) I'm testing come after L. But that's it - I have to start at L or A. I don't know why L and not some other letter.
- retrac 2y agoThe reason for L is probably because of the rhythm of the usual way the song goes. l, m, n... are rushed together because "elemenopee" is easy and fun to say quickly. ... a b c d e f g h / i j / k l m n o p q / r / s t / u / v w / x y and z I don't even need the song for the first couple lines these days!
- eastbound 2y agoProbably also for memorization. If the song were linear, letters would all cuddle together in the little children’s mind. It’s quite funny that, as a French native, we are all taught exactly the same song! Same pace, same tone, same elemenopy, but later in life, somehow y’all just smash tough/thorough/through/trough letters together, and we go on with our hon/hen/heim.
- rosmax_1337 2y agoThey can be a miniature sort-of-abacus. Keeping track of a number while you're scanning a lot of other things that occupy your mind. You can even sort of hold both the 10¹ digit and the 10⁰ digit on your hands if you're used to it, by semi-extending fingers or other methods, counting up to 100 and "physically" keeping the number in "memory". Most of the time it's not necessary but if I'm particularly tired I use it sometimes.
- Sakos 2y agoThis is pretty much it. I'll use my fingers if I don't want to keep a number in working memory.
- dylan604 2y agoThe mini-abacus is how I use them as well. I was in a math competition where you were not allowed to use any scratch paper or make any stray marks on the test nor could you attempt to correct your mistakes with an eraser or trying to turn a 7 into a 9 or similar. There was nothing against counting on fingers, so there are time where I still calculate with my finger tips
- sshine 2y agoI count difference between small numbers and enums on my fingers. This includes e.g. - the distance between months - the distance between wall clocks It's simpler for me to say "The number of months between March and September is... April, May, June, July, August, September, six." than "The number of months between March, 3, and September, 9, is 9-3 = 6," because I don't cache the numeric value of the months. Maybe I would if I were a Chinese speaker, where September's name is 九月 jiǔ yuè = nine month. For wall clocks that wrap around midnight, it's simpler to count because it removes dealing with negative numbers. I count the number of days in a month on my knuckles.
- acadapter 2y agoThe months after July are named after numbers, but the names are from the old calendar when the year started in March.
- eastbound 2y ago/!\ Months are intervals and suffer from the off-by-one problem. If you count from the 15th to the 15th, fine. But if you start on March 1st, finishing in September means 7 months, not 9-3=6. That’s when my fingers help me visualize full months.
- sshine 2y agoYeah, I think that might well be why I stick to finger counting, so I don’t accidentally count the offset as the first step.
- spike021 2y agoOccasionally for routine small counting. What I did find interesting is that I've used it more for Japanese especially when I'm in Japan. I've been very slowly learning Japanese and of course counting in Japanese. So if I'm ordering food someplace I try to either count (yen) change or figure out the amount of an item I'm ordering.
- mock-possum 2y agoI’ve noticed I count syllables on my fingers when writing in meter.
- ForOldHack 2y agoYes, in binary. Addition and multiplication.
- CoastalCoder 2y agoThis reminds me of something from the early Internet. There was a video (Flash?) of someone counting in binary on one hand, with acapella background music that sounded (to my untrained ear) like maybe some Nordic folk song. If anyone has a link, I'd love to see it again.
- CoastalCoder 2y agoUpdate: I've learned that the song is "Ievan Polkka". I'm still hoping someone has a link to the video though, just for nostalgia.
- chinathrow 2y agoNo, I count with my toes on both sides: 1 is all left toes and 2 is all right toes, 3 left again and so on. With a small break after each even number. I guess one could call it a tic.
- seydor 2y agoThe sexagesimal system used by the ancient babylonians and sumerians is believed to involve counting using the finger bones of our hand
- analog31 2y agoYes, counting rests (sections where I'm not playing) when playing in the band. That way, my fingers keep going even if I'm distracted by other things. I suppose you could say I'm counting time, rather than things.
- rolph 2y agoanybody remember this being pushed, K-TEL record style? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisenbop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisenbop [circa.US 1977]
- joezydeco 2y agoYes! I use Chisanbop for basic counting, but I never learned the advanced stuff.
- kvakerok 2y agoOnce you visualise a calculator in your head there's no need to count on fingers. But I've recently learned that there are people incapable of visualizing anything at all, so there's that.
- Suppafly 2y agoyou visualize a calculator and it gives you the correct answers when you type in various problems?
- keybored 2y agoI often count by a rhythm feel for smaller numbers. Maybe subdivide into rhythms of four and then count each of them manually.
- paulpauper 2y agochunking
- tiffanyh 2y agoSumerians counted to 12 on one-hand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal
- matrix87 2y agowell technically you can count to 31 on one hand
- torcete 2y agoI remember when I moved to the U.K. and asked at my new workplace for some memory sticks. - How many do you need? - Two. And I raised two fingers accordingly. - Here, in the UK, you don't do that with your fingers. That day I learnt something new about cultural differences.
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- radicalbyte 2y agoYes you do, you just do it palm facing the person you're talking to (known locally as the "victory sign").
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- inopinatus 2y ago“V for Victory” isn’t just a hand gesture, it was a WW2 meme of defiance. Curiously, Churchill used both hand orientations.
- maleldil 2y agoWho the hell signals two with your palm facing you? That's the only way you can get in trouble.
- JohnFen 2y agoI do. Whenever I'm holding my fingers up to indicate a number, I do it with my palms facing me. I'm in the US, though, where there is no special meaning for the two-fingers-raised hand gesture no matter which way your palms face.
- sam_goody 2y agoWhat's the highest number you can count on your fingers? When I need to do something repeatedly for a large number of times, I use my thumb to count the joints of my fingers, where the right hand is the "ones" and the left hand the "tens" column. In practice, I only go up to a hundred (ie. I use the first three fingers on each hand while counting - three on each finger, for 1-9), because decimal. But, the same system could get to 12x12 or 13x13. A really neat alternative is to count on your fingers using binary. The right thumb is 0, the pointer 2, the middle finger 4, the ring finger 8, etc. Amazingly, this gets you to over 1000 on your two hands, which is a really neat trick in the right setting. (Casually counting aloud off you fingers is great way to break the ice when you use binary - it is familiar but unexpected, dumb but smart.)
- DatDay 2y agoI get embarrassed counting on my fingers during exams. I can't seem to kick this habit.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoDuring exams? Don't worry about it. Your fingers are a pretty effective L3 cache. What's more embarrassing: counting on your fingers, or doing worse than you could've because you were worried about what other people think?
- DatDay 2y agoI'm feeling insecure about my math skills because I struggle with it.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoThen deliberately struggling more isn't going to help you. It's possible that you've reached the limit of your mental arithmetic ability (at least for now), but even professors of mathematics can struggle with mental arithmetic. Mental arithmetic is mostly important in school, and while shopping, but it's not really important for doing maths (especially not now we have calculators).
- CarVac 2y agoI count rests in orchestra by counting in finger binary, 31 on one hand is enough for a cello.
- fuzzfactor 2y agoIf you were missing any fingers, it might lead to an interesting perspective on imaginary numbers.
- quartesixte 2y agoI will commonly count things in safety critical situations with my fingers. Usually accompanied by pointing. And with a second party watching.
- noisycarlos 2y agoI actually learned to count on binary with my fingers at some point. So i can technically count to 32 on one hand and 1024 using both. It's been useful a handful of times (less than 5 times, not 32). But it's fun, and not that hard once you learn the pattern.
- z500 2y agoTeaching people how to do 4 in finger binary is always a hit, too.
- zzo38computer 2y agoWhen I want to count two things at the same time, sometimes I will count one of them by hand.
- euroderf 2y agoIIRC some cultures use a nifty method where the right hand is the ones column, the left hand is the tens column, and the thumb indicates five (sort of like an abacus). Then each hand can represent 0 to 9, and together they go to 99.
- rramadass 2y agoA very common technique used in Hindu/Buddhist Japa Meditation is to count the phalanges/creases in each finger including the tip thus making 4x5=20 count in one hand. For each 20 count of the right hand use 1 phalange/crease of the left hand and thus you can easily count upto 20x20=400 in a single complete cycle.
- JohnFen 2y agoYes, I do, all the time. Even more than that, I use my fingers to multiply. When I was in grade school, I had a mental block about memorizing my multiplication tables. I just couldn't do it (and I still don't have most of them memorized, but much more now than then). My teacher ended up teaching me a finger trick to let me quickly compute any multiplication from 6x6 to 10x10 and I use it to this day. This "one weird trick" was one of the most important things I learned when I was a young lad. I found this webpage that explains it: http://mathsonline.org/pages/tablesFingers.html http://mathsonline.org/pages/tablesFingers.html