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I do NOT recommend this paperback in spite of the free -- somewhat small -- abacus. It is a shame that this book is still on the market. The text is poorly written and too much text is spent on explaining ancient counting devices and very little text explaining the abacus. The amount of time spent explaining the use of the abacus itself could be considered an 'epilogue' in back of the book and is completely in error with very poor examples for its operation.
This book is a step by step, easy to understand guide to the ancient technique of the abacus, and I strongly encourage any parent with a struggling child to purchase one. The abacus, though somewhat primitive in the eyes of a novice, or to someone that has never seen one in action, is an excellent tool for helping children to understand and perform great mathematical feats. This book is an excellent resource for kids that are struggling with math. Math becomes fun, and even competetive.
You might get confused learning proper use with a Chinese Suan Pan(abacus). Still it isn't a bad one. You will never use both 5 count beads on the top, just one. This is not really enough for multiplication and division problems.
For instance you properly add and subtract going from left to right. When I was in highschool calculators were new and expensive. I used a Soroban with my slide rule. with some practice you can actually do some remarkable things with one even in the day of cheap calculators. This book has some nice anecdotal information on the abacus. The one that comes with it is actually fairly nice. You should actually do it this way on paper. Understand that most modern use of the abacus is based on the 1/4 Japanese Soroban.
This book will really teach you how and includes the standard tests for third and first degree certification. Still they are nice and some have larger beads easier to work than those on a Japanese Soroban. For an alternative place for getting an abacus check out Tomoe Soroban on the internet. They are great for kids learning how to carry etc. Try it, it's easier than right to left. I use an abacus for teaching my first grade twins math.
It is a Chinese 2/5 with 9 columns. And on the bottom you will use 4 of the 5 beads. If you want to really learn how to us it get Takashi Kojima's book, "Japanese Abacus: Its Use and Theory". The algorithms for using it in the book are wrong. Yes they work but are not how to use it properly.
If you want to become an abacus expert, I'm sure you could find thicker more expensive books that would suit you better.In addition to lessons on how to do basic math, the monotony of the exercise chapters are broken up by a sprinkling of history, story, and lore behind the development and use of the abacus.Overall, this is a good, brief, book which can answer the question, "How does that thing work." Best of all, it's short enough that you could read it in an hour or two.As a side note, the abacus it comes bundled with is also good for this introductory purpose. It serves it's purpose well: If you've always been curious about the little device that can be as fast as a calculator (in some people's hands), this is a good, short, book to give you an overview of the basic usage of it. It's small, and unless you have tiny fingers, you'll probably bump beads unintenionally -- but for the price, it's good enough to satisfy your curiosity. This book is an excellent introduction into how to use the abacus. I think some of other reviewers here missed the point of this particular text -- it wasn't meant to be the end-all official reference of how to use an abacus.
Japanese, etc)., and, even its jolly little excursion into binary arithmetic on the abacus. It's not like there's a complicated operating system or scripting language for this venerable tool.just the curious yet undeniable pleasure of sliding beads along sticks, just as people have been doing for centuries.I should also mention that the abacus makes a great conversation piece, sitting out on the top of your Pentium tower at work. I spent years mildly curious about the abacus--particularly, any time I saw film of schoolkids or shopkeepers in Asia producing inerrant sums and differences with their fingers all a blur. Yes, I suppose it is a short book, and it doesn't spend a lot of pages on mathematical drill, but how many pages do you need. "My new palmtop," I tell everyone who asks. Then, I saw this book, bundled with a little wooden abacus, and decided I'd give this ancient calculator a try. I found the book an delight, with its friendly discussions of the history of the abacus, its variant forms from land to land (Chinese vs.
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