Abacus is a Latin word that has its origins in the Greek words abax or abacus (meaning "table" or "tablet") which in turn, possibly originated from the Semitic word abq, meaning "sand".
The "abacus system" of mental calculation is a system where users mentally visualize an abacus to do calculations. No physical abacus is used; only the answers are written down.
This system is being propagated 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.
Many veteran and prolific abacus users in China, Japan, South Korea, and others who use the abacus daily, naturally tend to not use the abacus anymore but perform calculations by visualizing the abacus. This was verified when the right brain measured heightened EEG activity when calculating and compared with non-veterans who were using the abacus to perform calculations.
The standard abacus can be used to perform addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication; the abacus can also be used to extract square-roots and cubic roots.
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery. Injustice sustained at the exact degree of necessary tension to turn the cogs of the huge machine-for- the-making-of-rich-men, without bursting the boiler.”
—Georges Bernanos (1888–1948)