Dave Land wrote: > > Julia, et al, > > > Describe how to count up to 1023 on 10 fingers. :) > > That's easy to describe, but a whole lot more difficult to use :-). > > I remember seeing Doug Engelbart (inventor of the computer mouse, etc) > <http://tinyurl.com/9km7> using a one-handed chorded keyboard > <http://tinyurl.com/3ajld> that worked like your suggestion. Imagine > having to learn the binary representation of ASCII characters and repeat > it reliably! He claimed that it only took a couple of hours to learn. > But then again, he was Doug Engelbart.
Sounds like something I might like to play with one day. > Towards the more day-to-day end of the scale, I learned a very usable > way to count to 100 on two hands. It's interesting in that it mixes > bases 5 and 10 to work its magic. > > Poise your hands just above a surface, as over a piano keyboard. > > In this position, your hands represent that famous Arabic contribution > to mathematics, the invaluable zero. > > Starting with your pinky and moving towards your index finger, count off > 1-2-3-4 by lowering each successive finger to the surface (and keeping > it there), as you might when drumming your fingers. > > Next, lift all four fingers and drop your thumb for 5. > > Repeat steps 1-2-3-4 (with your thumb down) to represent 6-7-8-9. > > Here's where base 10 comes in. > > Raise all five fingers and drop your other pinky to represent 10. > > Repeat as necessary. I think you can take it from there. > > It's really fast -- I've used it when I had to "count noses" of people > coming into a room. I go index to pinky, not pinky to index. Otherwise, this is the system I've used for counting on my fingers for awhile. I read an article about it when I was in 6th grade or so. (Maybe 7th.) It's useful for keeping track of a total when you're adding a lot of smallish numbers. (The last time I used it was to count the number of great-grandchildren my mother-in-law's parents have. Not that either of them are still alive, but it tells me how many people from that branch are in my children's generation.) Julia _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l