THE ABACUS

INTRODUCTION ABOUT ABACUS

used as an effective teaching aid for promoting mental arithmetic in primary schools in 1995. primarily used as a calculating instrument for doing the four basic mathematics operations : addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Pupils in Stage II, that is, Year 4 to Year 6 in our Malaysian primary schools were introduced to this calculating tool as an enrichment activity

compulsory for Year 4 pupils to be taught how to use the abacus as a calculating tool since its inclusion in the primary school curriculum in 1995.

commonly called the sempoa in the Malay language and suanpanin Chinese.

DEFINITION OF ABACUS

Abacus is a Latin word that has its origins in the Greek words abax or abakon (meaning "table" or "tablet") which, in turn, possibly originated from the Semitic word abq or abak, meaning "sand".

HISTORY OF ABACUS
Why does the abacus exist?
The person operating the abacus performs calculations in their head and uses the abacus to keep track of the sums, the carrying part, etc. The device evolved from a simple need to count numbers. Merchants trading goods not only needed a way to count goods that were bought and sold, but also to calculate the cost of those goods.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A COUNTING BOARD AND AN ABACUS

COUNTING BOARD ABACUS

a piece of wood, stone or metal with carved grooves or painted lines between which beads, pebbles or metal discs were moved a device, usually made of wood (or plastic, in recent times), having a frame that holds rods with freesliding beads mounted on them

WHAT DID THE FIRST COUNTING BOARD LOOK LIKE? lost forever because perishable materials were used in their construction. In outdoor markets, the simplest counting board involved drawing lines in the sand with fingers or a stylus, and placing pebbles between those lines as place-holders representing numbers (the spaces between 2 lines would represent the units, 10s, 100s, etc.)

TECHNIQUE OF USING THE ABACUS

The beads in the modern abacus, as shown in Figure 6 are partitioned into 2 portions. Each column has 4 beads in the lower portion and 1 bead in the upper portion. Calculations are performed by placing the abacus flat on a table or on your lap and manipulating the beads with the fingers of one hand. Each bead in the upper deck has a value of five while each bead in the lower deck has a value of one.

The Modern abacus

TECHNIQUE

Beads are considered counted, when they are moved towards the beam that separates the two decks. The right-most column is the ones column; the next adjacent to the left of the ones column is the tens column; the next adjacent to the left of the tens column is the hundreds column, and so on. After 5 beads are counted in the lower deck, the result is "carried" on to the upper deck; after both beads in the upper deck are counted, the result (with a value of 10) is then carried to the left-most adjacent column.

When performing calculations involving decimals, a space between 2 columns is used to represent the decimal point. All the rows to the right of that space represent fractional portions while all the rows to the left represent whole number digits. In order to be proficient on the abacus, proper finger technique is extremely important. With a Chinese abacus, the thumb and the index finger together with the middle finger are used to move the beads. Beads in the lower deck are moved up with the thumb and down with the index finger. In certain calculations, the middle finger is also used to move beads in the upper deck.

FINGER TECHNIQUE

A Japanese textbook published in 1954 shows the proper technique for moving the beads. It shows the thumb being used to count beads in the lower deck and the index finger being used in all other cases. With the Japanese version, onlythe index finger and thumb are used. The beads are moved up with the thumb and down with the index finger. However, certain complex operations require that the index finger move beads up, for example, when adding 3 to 8 (the adding of the three is called Jian Chi Jia Shi which literally means subtract 7 add 10).

Example : 823 - 713 + 669 = ? Step 1: Show 823

Step 2: Subtract 713

Step 3: Add 669

Answer : 823 713 + 669 = 779