Puzzle Description:

A finger counting method that uses your fingers as an abacus

#1: Brian Bellis (mootpoint) on Jul 7, 2018 [SPOILER]

The fingers of your right hand are ones and right thumb is five.
The fingers of your left hand are tens and your left thumb is fifty.
Hundreds are kept in your head.

I gotta hand it to ya

Worked with a very nice lady from China who was a whiz with an Abacus which she brought to work one day. The rest of us decided that the only advantage we had was that our machines printed a tape. :)

I've used that method for years, but I didn't know it had a name.

when i need to count big on my fingers, i usually use binary.
two to the tenth, baby!

I learned that as a kid, from some workbook that my grandfather mailed off for. I never understood why it wasn't taught in school.

Me too, Maida.

The argument against is that it keeps kids from learning their math facts by allowing them to finger count. Quick, 7+8

Kinda fun.

um...keeps kids from learning math facts? do we still do that? my kids learned how to use a calculator in the public school. I'm the one who chose to make them memorize the facts, how to "carry the one," "check/prove" the division, etc, etc. They didn't have to memorize anything in the higher maths, either.
All my kids were home-schooled at one time or another, for different reasons, and I took advantage of the time - not letting them slide on ANYTHING lol

Even being away from school for 35+ years, not needing it for any reason on a daily basis, I still know that AxA + BxB =CxC among other things

Good for you, Koreen. Educators keep coming up with weird and overly complicated ways to do math or as you mentioned just use a calculator. I still (after more years than I would like to count) use basic algebra when it's not too complicated.

I don't believe in memorizing math facts. You just forget them. You need to internalize them, and you do that by picturing them in your mind. Counting on fingers helps that process.

Goto next topic

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