though you do not need to use an abacus in daily life at all, you don't even need to use it for the school maths syllabus, still a million Japanese kids every year study the abacus at about 20,000 abacus schools or kind of after they're called jukus where it's sort of after school clubs.And Japan has this kind of tradition of these jukus for other things, after school clubs.
Within a few years, you have the beginning of an enormous number of handwritten manuscripts on teach yourself arithmetic, commercial arithmetic. They're now called abacus books. They weren't discovered until the 1960s, but there's a lot of them around.
The clue it turned out was to look at everything else he'd written. Because most of those abacus books, most of those commercial arithmetic books, they also included a chapter on geometry. Well, there was no geometry in "Liber Abaci".
This is actually a rather more senior member of Goldman Sachs being interviewed in Congress about the Abacus transaction we were talking about a minute ago. I'd like to end by what's actually, in some ways, a rather similar video, but it's quite a lot older than that one.
In Japan, probably the greatest way that their approach to maths and numbers is different to in the U.K. and in America, certainly, is in the presence of the abacus . Now this is an abacus . An abacus is a counting machine or a calculating machine. It's really the oldest kind of calculating machine that there is and virtually all cultures that count have similar things. Sometimes they don't make them into mechanical objects they're just lines and you have sort of say pebbles on a counter. That's where the word counter comes
pocket calculator in Japan and from Russia, eastwards, actually, everyone would learn to calculate using an abacus . And actually I've brought this item on here which came out ?
whether you're right with a calculator. But obviously it was completely the other way around 'cause they didn't trust this so they would do it here and they would just check on the abacus just to see if they got it right. Now the phrase for reading, writing, arithmetic in Japanese is yonde, kaki, soroban; reading, writing, soroban. So it's very kind of culturey; it's something in their culture. And even
muscle as well to kind of practice that." And also I could see that the kids were really, they were really having fun. There's something about learning with the abacus , there's something kind of visceral about the counting that makes people enjoy it a lot more. Now I was kind of fascinated by the soroban and then Yugi Miyamoto made me more fascinated by telling me about something called anzan. Anzan is if you can do the abacus really well
them. It was absolutely fascinating. So the abacus is basically the oldest way to calculate, but it's still in some ways the most versatile and also the littlest understood. Now very quickly the final section I'm gonna have to rush through because I realize I'm running out of time.
So when you warm it up, it won't fatigue unless you stretch it pass this endurance limit. that you've generated in Abacus , into a structure that once you've 3D printed it, you can localize the stresses and strains appropriately.
funds in the course of the financial crisis-- a hedge fund which bet against a batch of subprime mortgages in what was called the Abacus transaction facilitated by Goldman Sachs. And this is the guy who in the end became the fall guy for that particular exercise-- a guy called "Fabulous Fab" Tourre.
I'm against regulation of the kind we have at the moment, which is the endlessly proliferating, complex rulebook. So that when we talked about that Abacus transaction, nobody went to jail for that.
Now the phrase for reading, writing, arithmetic in Japanese is yonde, kaki, soroban; reading, writing, soroban. So it's very kind of culturey; it's something in their culture. And even though you do not need to use an abacus in daily life at all, you don't even need to use it for the school maths syllabus, still a million Japanese kids every year study the abacus at about 20,000 abacus schools or kind of after they're called jukus where it's sort of after school clubs.
Now I was kind of fascinated by the soroban and then Yugi Miyamoto made me more fascinated by telling me about something called anzan. Anzan is if you can do the abacus really well after while you don't need to have a physical abacus anymore to do the same calculations 'cause you can visualize the abacus in your brain, right? So I said, "Well what do you mean?" He said, "Okay," and he got one of his top pupils and then just said something it was like I don't know 57 times 221 and the guy just gave the answer.
programming, sort of language, numbers, counting, all that kind of thing. And the right side of the brain is the visuospatial skills that we have. So normally we use the left side of the brain to do maths but with the abacus it's using the other side of the brain. So what this means is that you could do the abacus or Flash Anzan whilst, either your left side or right brain is still free so they designed this test which is to do Flash
of the brain to do maths but with the abacus it's using the other side of the brain. So what this means is that you could do the abacus or Flash Anzan whilst, either your left side or right brain is still free so they designed this test which is to do Flash Anzan whilst playing a language game at the same time.
is like a huge growth area. You look an Ebay there's all these things that are worth hundreds of pounds is I sought this item here which looks like a hand grenade or a pepper grinder. male #5: So you compared the various tallying techniques and you looked at abacus -- Alex Bellos: Yeah. >>male #5: and things like that--
The geometry was in this other book. So that means whoever started writing the first, whoever wrote the first of those abacus books not only was able to read and understand Leonardo's scholarly tome, "Liber Abaci", but also read and understand his other scholarly tome, "Practical Geometry."
And the key is not only to provide people with the skills to succeed today, but with the core competencies to thrive tomorrow so that today it's the cloud. In a few years, the cloud will become the abacus . And so you want to equip people with the fluency to do IT work at the Department of Labor today with the cloud,
You had a computer because it was a fancy word processor, which really meant it was a fancy typewriter. It was a fancy spreadsheet machine, which really meant that it was a very fancy abacus , in a certain sense. But that's not what actually changed the world with computers.
similar things. Sometimes they don't make them into mechanical objects they're just lines and you have sort of say pebbles on a counter. That's where the word counter comes from where you'd have little counting things. And the abacus -- a Japanese abacus called the soroban has five beads per rod so there are ten positions per rod so they represent the numbers from zero to nine. It should be horizontal so there's no, gravity isn't working. And at the top the bead can either be at the top or the bottom,
and five they all go down and the top one goes down to go five. So it's kind of like a little base five with the base ten there. Now you do not need, once you get good at the abacus it's very easy to do additions, subtraction 'cause just by putting in the sum you've done the addition already and multiplication is essentially a little bit more complicated addition so you can do additions, square roots, division, all that really, really quickly using an abacus . And in fact up until the
We confuse it with purpose. There is no picture of Mother Teresa standing there going, "Oh, I don't know, I'm not sure if you're good enough," or St. Peter at the pearly gates with the abacus
I thought that was just sort of brilliant and you don't need to be a math genius to appreciate the sort of the beauty and the simplicity in that. In Japan, probably the greatest way that their approach to maths and numbers is different to in the U.K. and in America, certainly, is in the presence of the abacus . Now this is an abacus . An abacus is a counting machine or a calculating machine. It's really the oldest kind of calculating machine that there is and virtually all cultures that count have
Now you do not need, once you get good at the abacus it's very easy to do additions, subtraction 'cause just by putting in the sum you've done the addition already and multiplication is essentially a little bit more complicated addition so you can do additions, square roots, division, all that really, really quickly using an abacus . And in fact up until the pocket calculator in Japan and from Russia, eastwards, actually, everyone would learn
And actually I've brought this item on here which came out ? in Japan in the '70s when the pocket calculator was becoming popular. And you might think that this abacus calculator is to, you do the sum on the abacus and then you just check whether you're right with a calculator. But obviously it was completely the other way around 'cause they didn't trust this so they would do it here and they would just check
Monday you might wanna do violin practice, Tuesday baseball, Wednesday soroban. And I went to one to see what they did. And this is basically what goes on in a soroban school. You learn to calculate using the abacus . It's very competitive and you can get speeds and when you get sort of good at it and because it's competitive the awards that you get are just like a martial art. So if you get good
about learning with the abacus , there's something kind of visceral about the counting that makes people enjoy it a lot more. Now I was kind of fascinated by the soroban and then Yugi Miyamoto made me more fascinated by telling me about something called anzan. Anzan is if you can do the abacus really well after while you don't need to have a physical abacus anymore to do the same calculations 'cause you can visualize the abacus in your brain, right? So I said, "Well what do you
don't I think up a game, some kind of counting task which the only way of solving it is using anzan?" So if you were to say 25 times 26 say. Millions of ways you could solve it: you could stick it in Google for example, you could go on the beach and a line of 25 and 26 pebbles, you could us an abacus , you could anzan, you could do all these things, so it's not good, that task just saying something.
Yep, he got it right. So what was going on? 'Cause you can't remember any of the intermediate sums. He's got a blank abacus , he sees the first one he just sees it instantly as a shape on the abacus . He sees the next one and instantly he just adds it. And he keeps on adding and he's like reading the printout at the end.
thought that maybe they would have to do it 10 times to get it right the first time, but this is the very first time they did it completely right. So the guys can do it and it's amazing. Now I was pretty impressed by this but not as impressed as I was for the next thing that you can do with an abacus . When I was trying to understand a little bit about why we can do this about the sort of neurology of it or the neuroscience of it, they say in Japan not that much research has been done on it but they basically say, "Right brain normal
do this about the sort of neurology of it or the neuroscience of it, they say in Japan not that much research has been done on it but they basically say, "Right brain normal maths, left brain," no "left brain normal maths, right brain abacus ." What they mean is that our left side of the brain, the left hemisphere, tends to be used for linguistic programming, sort of language, numbers, counting, all that kind of thing. And the right side of the brain is the visuospatial skills that we have. So normally we use the left side
of competitive chess and we visited chess tournaments like this one. Now, chess is an interesting arena to study because chess has an objective statistical rating system that what about this? Now, I don't know if you're familiar with this particular image, I'll read it to you. It says "Abacus 2007-AC1. Two billion dollars synthetic CDO referencing
It's very competitive and you can get speeds and when you get sort of good at it and because it's competitive the awards that you get are just like a martial art. So if you get good you get your Dans and it goes up in Dans, so just like in karate or whatever, I don't know anything about martial arts, but I know that they use Dans, they use Dans in the abacus . And I went to a competition, 'cause they have lots of competitions. This is a regional competition, there were maybe a couple of hundred kids doing it and it was several hours on their