Ben,
Well, there you go. I should have known better. Thank you for your detailed response to my little message. I had only seen the abacus used for adding up my bill at the check-out desk of Chinese restaurants. Should have known it was far more involved than that. >From time to time I have seen races between the abacus and an electronic calculator, but these have always been "fixed" races with adept abacus users and clumsy adding machine operators so I have taken the claims of greater speed with the abacus with a grain (or more) of salt. Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Julington Creek FL N30 07.68 W081 38.47 > Actually, for the Russian and the Chinese abaci (which are the ones that > I know), that 5th bead has a very important purpose. Working the abacus > is not simply a matter of moving and counting the beads: it's a > visualization tool that allows you to build muscle memories for using it > - i.e., to "mechanize" its operation so you can use it without thinking > about the process. _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
