Finger Counting, or Dactylonomy, is the art of counting along one's fingers. Though marginalized in modern societies by Arabic numerals, formerly different systems flourished in many cultures, including educated methods far more sophisticated than the one-by-one finger count taught today in preschool education.
Finger counting can also serve as a form of manual communication, particularly in marketplace trading – including hand signaling during open outcry in floor trading – and also in games such as morra.
Finger counting varies between cultures and over time, and is studied by ethnomathematics. Cultural differences in counting are sometimes used as a shibboleth, particularly to distinguish nationalities in war time. These form a plot point in the film Inglourious Basterds, by Quentin Tarantino, and in the novel Pi in the Sky, by John D. Barrow.
Read more about Finger Counting: Sports, Historical Counting
Famous quotes containing the words finger and/or counting:
“This is the finger of God!”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 8:19.
The magicians to Pharaoh.
“What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)