Using Fingers to Solve Math Problems - In Different Countries

Math was never my strong suit at school. The numbers never danced into line for me. So I thought that trying to deal with numbers in a foreign language would be impossible. But it turned out that it is actually possible!

While I was interviewing people for my survey (Finger-Counting In Different Cultures), I found out a dipper information about actual finger-counting system form different countries, not only how people start to count or show numbers, but how they solve complex math problems.

I met a girl in the MAX train, her name was Srividya and she was from India, I took a small interview with her, and she told me that in India they have a different calculating system than most Western countries use. It is mental abacus.

The research showed that this system of counting is being mostly practiced in India, but it also was used in China, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan. Mental calculation is said to improve mental capability, increases speed of response, memory power, and concentration power. The mental abacus can be used to perform addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication; the abacus can also be used to extract square-roots and cubic roots.

This system is impressive display of the mental boost! Form young age, children are able to solve complex math calculation within seconds simply by flicking their fingers thin air. Young children raising and flicking their fingers to keep track of long series of numbers and solve calculations with mind-blowing accuracy. They were apparently taught to use their hands as the beads of an abacus - an ancient calculating tool - to add, subtract, divide, and multiply at the speed of calculator. Also, not only kinds use this imaginary abacus, but adult are also practice it. For example, in the Flash Anzan event at the All Japan Soroban Championship, champion Takeo Sasano, a school clerk in his 30s, break his own world record; he was able to add fifteen three-digit numbers in just 1.7 seconds!!!

As I mentioned above, you can learn this easy math system regardless of how teachers taught you; regardless of your age; regardless of where you were born; and you will boost your mental capability, increases speed of response, memory power, and concentration power.

If you like the information that I found, you actually can go deeper, and get more information about this subject, or learn how to calculate so fast like those kids, by using simple techniques that you can use for your math problems here.

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Chisanbop came from Korea (chi (ji) finger + sanpŏp (sanbeop) calculation[1] 지산법/指算法). It is another abacus, which uses finger counting method to perform basic mathematical operations. The key, to finger math, is understanding how to count. So here is the basic concept of Chisanbop.

With this method it is possible to display all numbers from 0 to 99 with two hands, and with one (left) hand display 100 .
There are two ways to do calculation with fingers ever hand real

The hands are held in a relaxed posture on or above a table. All fingers are floating off the table to begin with. The fingers are pressed into the table to indicate value. Each finger (but not the thumb) of the right hand has a value of one. Press the index finger of the right hand onto the table to indicate "one." Press the index and middle fingers for “two”, the three leftmost fingers for “three”, and all four fingers of the right hand to indicate “four”. The thumb of the right hand holds the value “five”. To place the value “six”, press the right thumb and index finger onto the table. The thumb indicates “five” plus the “one” indicated by the finger. The left hand represents the tens digit. It works like the right hand, but each value is multiplied by ten. Each finger on the left hand represents “ten”, and the left thumb represents “fifty”. In this way, all values between zero and ninety-nine can be indicated on two hands.

It seem that it so hard and it will take a long time to learn it. Actually, it is not that hard, even at age  you just need to understand basics, practice, and use it. And you will be able to solve math problems with your hands, so fast.

What's more amazing, is that this effective technique can be used by anyone. The mental abacus does not depend on the language system. While most others need to represent numbers with verbal names, mental abacus appears to be entirely a visual task, without the use of a calculator, pencil and paper.


Here is a tutorial for chisanbop and here is the video tutorial, in case if you want to try if it works, or if you want to learn and practice. Try it, from my experience it's easy and fun.