General

What Is an Abacus and How is it Useful

To know about the benefits of abacus, it is important to know about abacus. Abacus is an ancient technique that was invented much before computers, calculators, or even arithmetic. It was first done by using paper and pencil and was the most advanced device for calculation. Before abacus was invented the only way people could calculate was by using fingers, toes, or stones in the dirt. It was the only way people could crunch numbers and then the abacus was invented. It is interesting to know that even now many people in certain parts of the world use abacus and it is still used as a primary counting device and in some parts, they are a backup to the modern devices. It was invented around 2500 years back in China and later on spread to numerous counties such as Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia etc. It has now become

Why is Learning Abacus Beneficial

Abacus is extremely helpful as it inculcates an interesting way to learn and teaches a fun new way to learn about numbers. It teaches a new way to count, add, subtract using complementary numbers. This also helps to solve problems in a novel way and it is easier, faster, and better for people to solve problems in a systematic manner.

This is How Abacus is Used

Before one learns how to use abacus, it is important to be aware of the fact that there are many types of abacus. For instance, there is the classical abacus or Chinese abacus which has two beads at the top and five beads at the bottom and. The Japanese abacus, called the Soroban, has one bead at the top and four beads at the bottom. This is how the modern abacus is used:

Heavenly Beads

The beads at the top are called the “Heavenly beads” and these are five in number in the first column. The beads at the bottom are called the Earthly Beads and these are placed as one beach each in the first column. When a bead is moved toward the middle bar that is known as the reckoning bar, it can be considered as counted and when no bead touches the reckoning bar that column becomes equal to zero. There is a separation of dots and colored beads are varied depending on the abacus that is being used, however they are always used to distinguish numbers into sets of three.

Advantages of an Abacus

Once you have figured out how the beads function you can successfully start to calculate on the abacus and practice sums like addition, multiplication, subtraction, fractions, and integers.

It is also important to know what are the benefits of the abacus, not only does it help to solve arithmetic problems , it helps a child recollect easily as the child gets in the habit of picturing a problem. Since abacus promotes visualization, it helps a child immensely as the child is able to picture the abacus in the head and solve the problem correctly instead of other children who picture words.

Abacus for beginners helps logical thinking and reasoning and that is great while solving problems like integers and fractions. The childs breakdown of the problem is logical and it helps the child use this motto throughout his or her life. Also, it helps the child recall, abacus helps the child to focus and concentrate and it has been seen that children who use abacus have a great tendency to recall.

So, the next time you think about something that will help your child develop a fondness for mathematics, reach out for an abacus and help the child love numbers and crunch numbers with pace.