Ask HN: Abacus, learning; Can someone explain the order of pushing the beads

2 pointsby kruffalon9 mesi fa2 comments

Hello, I've decided to learn the abacus (bi-quinary coded decimal).

I'm doing it because it's fun to learn new things and because I like the tactile, soundscape and afk aspects of the abacus.

At the moment I'm practising counting up and down with the "correct" fingers but it feels like I want to start doing simple arithmetic calculations (+, -, × & ÷) soon.

However, the resources I'm finding don't really talk about, or even show, the order in which to push the beads.

It might be the case that I'm just overthinking this but somehow I think it matters.

For example: 63 - 27

What is the order to push the beads, and why?

My guess is:

- 1 bead from the earth 10 rod down (-10)

- 1 heaven 1 down (+5)

- 2 earth 1 down (-2)

- 1 heaven 10 up (-50)

- 3 earth 10 up (+30)

So first I do the -7 and then I do the -20, I also move the bead(s) with the highest value first.

Does this seem correct?

I suspect I'm not thinking about the numbers and values correctly as I'm used to think about numbers in 1-10-100s and not in 1-5-10-50-100s.

If you have any resource or your own experience to share I would very much appreciate it.

2 comments

dapperdrake9 mesi fa

There are YouTube videos on this. Personally, the Japanese Soroban was a bit easier to get into. And it can handle both decimal and hexadecimal.

kruffalon9 mesi fa

Thank you, maybe you could share a link or specific search term I should use.

Because I guess I'm just bad at searching, since none of the text or video guides I've found contain the information I'm looking for.

(I want a soroban too, but so far I haven't been able to get one yet, atm I just don't use the second heaven bead or the 5th earth bead.)