Hi
I was wondering if i practiced abacus by myself would i get good at mental math eventually?
Or do i need to go to classes.
How does one get good at the mental part once the additions are learnt on the Abacus please?
thanks
Can I Learn Abacus by Myself?
sheya on 16/12/2016 - 19:58
Comments
How much cashback from Cashrewards will you get if you bought a Xiaomi Note 3 at $225 AUD and the cashback is 10 percent?
LMAO YES
I don't think you need a abacus for this. An abacus is just a mechanical device for doing basic arithmetic operations. It's not practical in modern life. Will you whip one out in an aisle in a supermarket?
I'm sure you will be able to find an e-book on short cuts for mental arithmetic. Here is one off the top of my head.
To divide by 5, shift the decimal point left to divide by 10, and then double the result. When can you use this? If you want to work out 20% of something, this is dividing by 5.
When I was in Korea, the exchange rate was about 1AUD = 850W. So I dropped 3 zeros off the right and added 20% to get a rough idea of the price. You can invent similar tricks for other exchange rates.
Online they teach you how to use the abacus, I've seen youtube videos of kids that multiply with an "imaginary" abacus which is basically one in their head and they just flick their fingers as if they had a real one.
Honestly though an abacus is just a device, I guess like a calculator, theres a lot more mathematical tricks out there that can shorten multiplication, division, addition, subtraction to be done simply.
Take something like this for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AJvshZmYPs
Other then that, I think you just keep practicing, and you'll get faster at it. Might be worth doing online quizzes or trying the maths section here http://freerice.com/category every correct answer gives like a free grain of rice to charity.
I was going to say maybe if you're an engineer, but then I realised you're not talking about the software.
When I was young I remember one way of being disciplined or punished was having to kneel on one of those for a set amount of time …
Probably explains why it never really helped my mental arithmetic.
mental arithmetic is something you can practice by yourself in almost everyday situation. Abacus not required.
When you're shopping for example, how do you work out whether a 1.2KG bag of rice at $9.95 is better value than a $6.95 600gram package?
How much cashback from Cashrewards will you get if you bought a Xiaomi Note 3 at $225 AUD and the cashback is 10 percent?
things like that. The abacus is not the only tool you can use. If you've ever worked in sales you'd probably need to have good skills in working out percentages and fractions as well. All this you can learn just by everyday practice and not reaching out for a calculator when you're stuck :)