The Far East flies high when it comes to numeracy while the West flounders. Is the abacus the secret of their success?
1946: The United States Army holds a contest pitting a Japanese abacus user against a soldier using an electric calculator. In four out of five rounds, the abacus wins. The soroban or Japanese abacus ...
FORT LEE — For 10 seconds, a series of 50 random three-digit numbers flashed on the screen. After another second, abacus master Jeonghee Lee announced she'd finished the mental addition, correctly ...