better late than never

[kimba1]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/27/MN121L7K1D.DTL


this should of been done decades ago. I`ve several times pointed out we have an anti-education culture here. hopefully this will be a good start. I still get upset people need calculators to figure out 4% from a $1,000.00

[Plane]

http://www.cs.iupui.edu/~aharris/chis/chis.html

I would like to hire 500 South Korean Math teachers.

Place them in teaching colledges and Kindergartens  so that Teachers and students together would know how to use and abacus or how to make their fingers serve as an abacus.

[kimba1]

I actually know how to use an abacus. it`s really not much different than using scratch paper and chisenbop is the same principle. but notice how few people here in the U.S. use scratch paper.

but i agree about using korean teachers though. they will most definately get those teachers and students inline

[Amianthus]

I actually know how to use an abacus.

Yeah, it's pretty easy. I also (mostly) remember how to use a slide rule.

[kimba1]

I always wanted to learn that. hopefully youtube has that. it`s strange youtube sometimes is more reliable than the library for this tip of info

[Xavier_Onassis]

I imagine that teaching US students how to use an abacus would be met with all the enthusiasm by Tea Party types as the metric system and the new math.

Russians are very good with abaci, as are Chinese. I imagine that is why American educators may have  avoided it. They would have been accused of introducing "Communist math" to innocent American children.

 An evil foreign conspiracy, another vile attempt to separate our children from their parents.

I think it would be an excellent idea, because as I have said, all knowledge is preferable to all ignorance.

[Amianthus]

I imagine that teaching US students how to use an abacus would be met with all the enthusiasm by Tea Party types as the metric system and the new math.

Hmm, I'm a "Tea Party" type and I have no problems with "metric" or "new math". I don't have much of a problem with an abacus, either. All of those (except the "new math") are a waste of time, however. A principle failing of the abacus is the inability of the device to use any base other than 10 - which is a similar failing with the metric system (it is only convenient when doing conversions that are multiples of 10). The "new math" is an attempt to get children to think in bases other than 10, which is a worthwhile goal - but those other items then try to instill an even greater reliance on base 10 at the same time. Trying to achieve contradictory goals simultaneously is never a good thing. Even a slide rule supports multiple bases, and most basic scientific calculators nowadays have support for at least octal, binary, and hexadecimal as well as the "standard" base ten. A good calculator will have support for arbitrary bases (and I won't buy one that doesn't).

[kimba1]

might be true,but the metric system failed only because americans are being taught it way differently than other countries. Here it`s conversion from standard to metric,but everywhere else it`s straight metric.

awhile back I met some tourist who ask how many kilometers to the civic center,since I didn`t know metric then. I said go 4 blocks that dirrection. he simply kept saying how many kilometers.. he just can`t grasp blocks.

later on I learn 4 blocks would of been shorter than a kilo anyway so he`d be lost anyway.

[Amianthus]

awhile back I met some tourist who ask how many kilometers to the civic center,since I didn`t know metric then. I said go 4 blocks that dirrection. he simply kept saying how many kilometers.. he just can`t grasp blocks.

Yeah; and he'd have been lost if he was asking for directions in miles as well. It's got nothing to do with the metric system.

I know someone that had directions the were like "turn right at xxx street, in 100 yards, turn left at yyy street" - the person missed the turn at yyy street, but didn't realize that they had missed it until they went like 6 miles (about 9.5km for the metric friendly around here). Not being able to follow directions has nothing to do with the metric system, even though some people would like to blame it on the system other than their preference.

I heard someone else complaining once about the pain of converting volumes in recipe to weights and "wished the US had switched to metric when they had the chance." They were totally oblivious to the fact that changing to metric would not have changed the recipes from volume based to weight based by magic. The US has a preference for volume based recipes (even though they are less accurate) for historical reasons, and those reasons have nothing to do with the system used.

[Plane]

Would an abacus with more rods but fewer beads on each rod work as an Octal abacus?

Or one with fewer rods but more beads for hexadecimal?


A bianary abacus would have one bead on each rod?


These would be pretty good for introduceing the concept wouldn't they?

[kimba1]

Top beads represent fives,bottom are ones. i think the present beads maybe enough to do octal or hex. Binary might be tough,not enough room.
Just change usage . Remember it's just a representation system and the operators is doing the real calculation.
Just like scratch paper,but abit more memory usage.

[Amianthus]

Top beads represent fives,bottom are ones. i think the present beads maybe enough to do octal or hex. Binary might be tough,not enough room.

Enough for octal (you just ignore one bottom one, and each top one is 4 instead of 5). Not enough for hex, though.

[Plane]

http://www.binaryabacus.com/

[Plane]

Marble Binary Abacus



This is a wooden computer.

I might try to build this , it would be a pretty good toy.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The metric system is not worse than the English (inches/feet/yards, pints/quarts/gallons, etc) system, regardless of whatever base your calculations are in. I have never had any use for doing math in anything other than base ten. It is useful for some purposes, I am sure, but most people can get by with just base ten.

You are hardly a typical Teasie. That would be Kramer.