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Discuss “How Things Work: The Abacus”

This week, How Things Work is going to set the record straight on how to operate an abacus in the unfortunate event that your graphing calculator dies during your mathematics exam.

An abacus is a calculation tool that was commonly used by the Chinese as early as the year 3000 BCE and the Babylonians in 2400 BCE. The concept of a mechanistic counting device gained widespread appeal, giving rise to the Japanese abacus, the Roman abacus, the Greek abacus, the Russian abacus, the Danish abacus, the Native American abacus, and the Abacus for the Visually Impaired.

Unfortunately there is no Pittsburgh abacus, so the following directions will assume that the reader is acquainted with the popular Chinese model.

An abacus consists of a series of parallel...

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