Probably, the first device was the counting board. This appeared at various times in several places around the world. The earliest counting boards consisted of a tray made of sun dried clay or wood. A thin layer of sand would be spread evenly on the surface, and symbols would be drawn in the sand with a stick or ones finger. To start anew, one would simply shake the tray or even out the sand by hand.

Eventually, the use of sand was abandoned. Instead, pebbles were used, and placed in parallel grooves carved into stone counting boards. The oldest surviving counting board is the Salamis tablet,used by the Babylonians circa 300 B.C. It was discovered in 1846 on the island of Salamis. It is made of white marble and is in the National Museum of Epigraphy, Athens.

Later counting boards were made of various other materials. Besides the marble used by the Greeks,bronze was used by the Romans. As part of their primary education, young boys in both Greece and Rome learned at least some arithmetic using an abax or abacus. In fact, Plato suggested, “As much as is necessary for the purposes of war and household management and the work of government.”

At some point, the Romans added additional grooves between each decimal position. So now, the grooves would signify 1s, 5s, 10s, 50s, 100s, 500s, 1000s, etc. This corresponded to the Roman numerals I, V, X, L, C, D, M. The Latin term for pebble is calculus. So, while calculus is considered higher mathematics, the term actually refers, literally, to the ancient counting boards and pebbles.

In the quest for an easily portable counting device, the Romans invented the hand abacus. This consisted of a metal plate with metal beads that ran in slots. The beads were held to the device by flanging on the back, but left loose enough to allow movement of the metal beads in the slots. The Roman hand abacus on display in the London Science Museum would fit in a modern shirt pocket.

The bead arrangement is like the modern soroban, in that it has one bead in the relatively short upper slots, and four beads in the longer lower slots. There is a photograph of another Roman hand abacus at the Museo Nazionale Ramano at Piazzi delle Terme, Rome.

Some people believe that the Roman abacus, which pre-dates the Chinese suan-pan, was introduced into China early in the Christian era by trading merchants.

In the Middle ages, counting tables were quite common throughout Europe. In France, the counting pebbles were called jetons inspiring this little rhyme.

Abacus math institution can help your child getting rid of math phobia. For many, mathematics is a big problem. Abacus math institution can be very beneficial for the growing children who have just started studying.

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Well I have the answer to my own question about free lunches, having been to the Abacus 21st Birthday Party on Friday.

The event was fantastic – 125 friends and former colleagues, a great venue and excellent food. The night vanished far too quickly and the only real complaint was that we’d had to wait 21 years for this event.

In the words of Conrad Young, on why we were having a party
” Now felt like a good time to celebrate, and besides, we have a bit of spare cash lying around!”

No-one is publicly saying exactly how much the purchase of Abacus by Thomson Reuters cost, but a number of sources put it in the £20M to £30M bracket. For my money, that should easily pay for a party and change for a few more :- )

And so to my original question, is there such a thing as a free lunch? Well there was no obvious hard sell, no veiled recruiting and no washing of dishes afterwards. It really did feel like a pure celebration so I guess there is such a thing as a free lunch after all!

If you went and have an opinion, let me know if you agree.

Computers are tools used to process the data according to the procedures that have been formulated. Computer word originally used to describe the work people do arithmetic calculations, with or without tools, but the meaning of this word and then transferred to the machine itself. Their origins, processing information almost exclusively related to arithmetical problems, but modern computers are used for many tasks unrelated to mathematics.

In such a definition is a tool like a slide rule, mechanical calculator types ranging from abacus, and so on, until all contemporary electronic computers. Better terms suitable for a broad sense such as “computer” is “that process information” or “information-processing system.”

Over the years there have been several different meanings to the word “computer”, and several different words are now referred to simply referred to as a computer.

The word computer is generally never used To define people who do arithmetic calculations, with or without a donkey engine. According to the Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, the word is used in English in 1646 as the word for “people who count” and then before 1897 is also used as a “mechanical calculators. During World War II, the word refers to female workers of the United States and England whose work calculating artillery war path with the cash register.

Charles Babbage designed one of the first calculating machine called the analytical engine. In addition, a variety of simple machine tools such as slide rule will be considered as well as a computer.

Learning Math tricks and tips are essential when child is having some problems while solving math sums. Math tricks and tips are very helpful for those really have problems in mathematics.

Mathematics is the subject on which many child or students have dilemma since their childhood. Math tricks and tips include some methods and process that helps child learning the basics of mathematics.

Global Path is the leading institute of teaching math tricks and tips. We have professionals with us who can tackle teaching the students or child efficiently.

A comprehensive computer-based training programe is now available online for all aspiring candidates from across the globe in either Amadeus or Galileo or Sabre, teaching the complete IATA Fare Construction Formula as taught manualy in Level 1 (Foundation) and Level 2 (Consultant) training programs of IATA.

But before enrolling directly with IATA, an aspiring candidate must pass through airlines PNR Mangement Course and Automated Fares Course from us so that they can directly enroll with IATA for self study of their Advanced GDS Fares & Ticketing program.

Visit: http://www.edufire.com/amar to know more details and attend paid and free public classes to learn any one of the airlines reservations system, as cited above

Many new aspiring candidates think or presume that to persue a prospective career in the aviation industry as Counter Staff is to go or begin with Level 1 (Foundation) and gradually proceed to Level 2 (Consultant) and so on……this is actually NOT TRUE with the advent of GDS (Global Distribution Systems, like Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, Worldspan, Abacus, Apollo and so on…).

The Foundation and Consultant levels were useful when there were no computers in the offices of airlines and travel agencies to execute air reservation/s and issue (or print) air-ticket/s.

The staff in those days used to work out manually the fare/s for complexed international itineraries (as I used to do and sometimes used to take some pain killer tablet/s to overcome those stressful and demanding days in the office to meet the challenge/s of constructing the fare/s) and make of the schedule of flights using RED and BLUE ABC manuals (now it is called OAG and still available in the market for which I was appointed their sales coordinator in India till recently).

All the aviation industry entities (as described below) were compelled to susbcribe for costly manuals such as ABC (now OAG, Official Airlines Guide), APT (Airlines Passenger Tariff) & PAT (Passengers Air Tariff), now both of these combined and published as AT (Air Tariff) by IATA Netherlands, General Fares & Rules Books on WH (Western Hemispere) & EH (Eastern Hemisphere) and so on…

In todays era of rapid computerisation, practically all the aviation industry entities, such as Airlines, GSA (General Sales Agents of a particular airliner in a specific alloted region which act as offices of that particular Airlines), Travel Agencies (IATA or Non-IATA), Airlines Business Process Outsourced (BPOs or back offices) do not subscribe to any manuals on which the Foundation and Consultant training is based as everything now is available on any one of the powerful Global Distribution Systems (GDS), as cited above.

With the advent of GDS in the office of the aviation industry entities, the staff can now easily access a wide range of information through the proper use of the system in which they will be working.

A trained staff with PNR Management and in Automated Fares & eTicketing Course/s can now see LIVE seat inventory for almost all the major and low cost airliners of the world, pick up an appropriate seat as per Fare selected and rules governing it, make instant reservations and create PNRs (Passenger Name & Recod Locator File in an GDS) and issue effortlessly Electronic Tickets (eTickets) without bothering to take any pain killers….. sometimes I envy the present day aviation staff as they have so many modern day-to-day equipments, techniques and training available at their disposal to function and maximise their work output, and in less stressful environment.

For more details, email me  at amar(dot)kewlani(@)gmail(dot)com

With the best of my regards

Amar Kewlani
Mira-Bhayandar Suburb on the outskirts of
Mumbai – INDIA

I finally got ctags working in vim with Matlab files, so that now I can cruise easily around the HMM Toolbox code. In the interest of not having to go through the same mess later, a story: First I installed Macports; then I downloaded Exuberant Ctags; I downloaded a Vim-compatibility package from the Mathworks; lastly, I added the basic libraries of non-C Matlab functions thus:

$ctags -R ./* /Applications/Ocatave.app/

I was pleased to recently receive an invitation to a celebration of 21 years of the Abacus product. Having worked there for a decade (Jan 1995 – Sept 2004) I have a lot of memories, and it appears that the Partners of Deloitte are happy to celebrate it’s 21st birthday with a party for Abacus Alumni.

This does beg the question, what value do these events have? Well I guess there are the obvious benefits for the hosting Firm; good relations, possible referrals and re-hiring of staff. For the attendees themselves, probably the list is the same (plus food and drink, of course).

It can be hard to put a real figure on these ethereal benefits usually, but today I can suggest that £3 million would be a good starting point.

I have heard a story this year of a former accounting firm employee who got some very bad news about their pension arrangements with a Top 10 organisation the day before seeing a set of tender documents. I do not believe that their former employer won that piece of work ;- )

So perhaps the moral of the story here is that whilst putting a price on Alumni relations may be difficult, if you can it probably means that you’ve already lost out.

(Basat en tres notícies publicades a La Vanguàrdia del 19 al 21 d’octubre)

La convergència de mitjans i de dispositius no deixa de fer-se més i més complexa cada dia, doncs la tecnologia avança a un ritme frenètic que, personalment, no deixa d’impressionar-me. Una de les últimes novetats que s’ha donat a conèixer aquesta setmana però que es posarà a la venda a Catalunya i al País Valencià a partir del pròxim 1 de novembre és el llibre digital. L’empresa encarregada d’introduir el llibre digital al mercat català serà la cooperativa Abacus que afronta el repte amb l’objectiu d’aconseguir que comprar un llibre digital es converteixi en un acte tan normal com comprar-ne un de tradicional. Tot i així, el director de la cooperativa afirma que “caldrà adaptar el sistema de llibres digitals al mercat català perquè el lector potencial no està tan acostumat a comprar per internet com passa als Estats Units, per exemple”.

Les novetats de la setmana en la convergència de mitjans i dispositius, però, no s’acaba ni molt menys aquí. Dimarts es va donar a conèixer oficialment que la “guerra del futbol” ja ha saltat de la televisió a la telefonia, doncs Mediapro ha anunciat que pretén dur el seu nou canal Gol TV (que actualment ja es pot veure en plataformes de pagament, per cable i per ADSL) als telèfons mòbils. Vodafone i Movistar han reaccionat ràpidament i ja han començat a competir per les transmissions dels partits. Malgrat que Vodafone va ser la primera en llançar una oferta, Movistar a hores d’ara ja la ha millorat tot oferint, a més,  “videos amb els resums dels partits de Primera i Segona Divisió pocs minuts després de que hagin finalitzat”.

I pels qui encara tinguin ganes de més, U2 retransmetrà demà 25 d’octubre el seu penúltim concert de la gira 360º al Pasadena Rose Bowl (California, EEUU) per internet. El concert que s’oferirà en directe (aquí seran les 4:30 de la matinada) i de forma gratuïta a través de YouTube és “una iniciativa sense precedents” que el grup “ja tenia pensada des de fa temps” segons va explicar el mànager del grup irlandès.

Davant d’aquest panorama s’acabaran els dilemes sobre si sortir o quedar-se a casa els caps de setmana, doncs, siguem on siguem, podrem disfrutar de tot i més a través de, per exemple, el nostre telèfon mòbil. Tanmateix, tot i els clars avantatges i facilitats que ens ofereix aquest món tan digitalitzat que ens cap dins de la butxaca, no és possible que això acabi perjudicant les relacions cara a cara entre les persones? Què farem el dia que quedem en un bar per prendre alguna cosa amb un amic i ell vulgui veure el partit i nosaltres un concert? Sabrem prescindir dels aparells o cadascú es col·locarà els seus auriculars i gaudirà amb la seva petita pantalla? Tot i que aquesta última situació plantejada encara pot semblar una mica fora de lloc avui en dia, no descarto que es pugui produir en un futur no massa llunyà.

Abacus training is one of the trainings that facilitate the entire education of calculation that is mathematics. Children from the early period of their life get confused in the calculations. This confusion or phobia remains with them for whole the life to them.

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Abacus is one of the oldest techniques that diminish the so called ‘Math Phobia’. In abacus there are some methods that is easily understood by the child and he or she can do the calculation easily.

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Abacus training is indeed very necessary for the real mental growth of a child. Abacus training helps building child’s mind from the age of his or her mental growth i.e. four or five. Abacus is found to be most powerful source to develop a child’s mind to do basic calculations.

If the basic concept of mathematics is not clear to a child, he or she can’t do well in future in mathematics. Abacus training helps the children doing calculations without any problem.

Global path is an institution that helps giving abacus training with its best to the children. Abacus training is given to the students at global path with a group of professionals.

Hahha… Anyone want to buy these for me?

Abacus pendant: makes me think of my parents. we used to have a bunch around the house that they collected from their travels

Quarter Holder: I think these are just so cool! from the  60’s

Geode Pendant

There are many abacus institutions in Delhi that provides basic mathematics learning classes for children. Abacus institutions in Delhi has good infrastructure to provide quality education to teach maths basics.

Learning mathematics through abacus is really beneficial for the child to strengthen their minds doing sums of mathematics in upper standards.

Global Path is one the places that is one of the reputed abacus institutions in Delhi. We provide quality education to the children.

Well unless the Gods are moving in a very mysterious fashion tonight, the Abacus deal completes at midnight, and that’s less than an hour away. Then it’s bye-bye Deloitte and Hellooo Thomson Reuters. The team have already moved out of New Street Square and into temporary offices at the old Andersen/Deloitte overflow space in North West Wing of Bush House. Last time we occupied that building there was a biological weapon decontamination scare I recall – hopefully not an omen!

Today I also unexpectedly bumped into Carmel Moore, formerly of the Abacus team and most recently Pfizer. It appears that she has very recently moved back into the Big Firm marketplace, as she was seen in More London Place sporting an EY staff card. Well done to you Carmel; a shrewd move in the current consulting frenzy for iXBRL and SAO advice. She promised me today that the LinkedIn profile will be updated, so I hope to see EY the other end of this link very soon …

To finish off the movers piece, and to prove that it’s not just the Ladies who have been getting in on the act, a big Congratulations to Geoff Perkins on his move from KPMG to PwC. Geoff was the key to Global Mobility at KPMG, and will be difficult to replace. I hope that he finds the right support for his business with his new organisation

Abacus institutions help the children grow their mind in order to do calculation. The basic calculation phobia leads to the phobia of solving mathematics. Abacus institutions have their own style of teaching.

Abacus is one of the ancient arts that have been helping us learning maths basics for many a year.

Global Path is one of the abacus institutions that is helping out the children from their mathematics phobia.

“I have an abacus mind in a calculator world.”

Beth, my amazing library assistant

Take a look at this picture of the Chinese abacus, also known as the suanpan. This picture is from Wikipedia’s article on the abacus, which also treats of many others. The picture shown depicts the number 6,302,715,408. Thus the right-most column is units and the left-most column is billions. If all the beads were away from the center bar, the number represented would be zero. The second column from the right, as you can see, is 0. Now for an explanation.

The topmost and the bottom-most beads are never used in decimal calculations. I’ll return to their uses in a moment. First, what do the other beads represent? The bottom bead on top represents 5, the bottom beads represent 1, but the last one isn’t used. The number 8 in the first column is shown by pulling down 5 and pushing up 3: 5 + 3 = 8. The maximum number we can render in each column, therefore is 9—remembering that the top and bottom bead are Off Limits, as it were.

Now suppose we wanted to reduce this number by 3. Simple. We just move the three bottom beads of the first column away from the center. That leaves the top bead still in place: 5. But let’s instead add 3 to the original number. Here we must proceed one number at a time. We move one bead up from the bottom, making 9. Two more beads to go. But we can’t move any more beads in the first column; they’re all used up. Therefore we move one bead up in the bottom part of the next column over—and zero out the first column. One more to go. We add this one to the first column again. And we can do so because it has been zeroed out in the last step; it can hold a unit once again. The result is that the 8 has now turned into 11: 6,302,715,408 + 3 = 6,302,715,411. A nice do-it-yourself demonstration is available here.

Division and multiplication become more complicated, but in essence one does it on the abacus just as one does it on paper, keeping the intermediate results on another part of the abacus. No paper needed. When these devices came into use, paper was not as common as it is today. Abaci are big because they need extra space to record division and multiplication steps. The last post shows a Chinese abacus.

There are many kinds of abaci. The Japanese soroban, for instance, omits the topmost and the bottom-most beads; it is optimized for decimal calculation. But then the question arises, what possible use is the full Chinese suanpan? Oddly enough, long, long before computers came into use and hexadecimal math became the bane or blessing of computer-types like me, the Chinese evidently used that numerical system—and the suanpan can let you do math in hex. It was introduced in the fourteenth century of our era.

The hexadecimal system is base-16 as the decimal is base-10. In decimal the highest number is 9, in hexadecimal 15. Now if you use both of the top beads and all of the bottom beads, you get 16 values in each column, from 0 to 15. Here is a bit of information you didn’t know you needed: in hex the numbers run like this: 0, 1, 2,  3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F.  F therefore is fifteen, shown on the Chinese abacus by moving all of the beads towards the center. And, not surprisingly, the number Hex 10 actually stands for decimal 16.

I am a calculating sort of guy—which fact you’d never guess from the mediocre C’s I got in every mathematical department on up to and abruptly ending with Algebra. Calculus? Lord. I was a grown man with children before that subject even touched me and I began to trace its origins in Leibniz and Newton. Statistics? My dear wife studied it and can give me chapter and verse—but I lived it. There is a kind of difference.

In my mature years—when assembler, Basic, Cobol, Pascal, C, C++, and Adobe’s PostScript were added to my Hungarian, German, French, and English, not to mention shards of Latin, Greek, Arabic, Spanish, and Italian—I used to hang an abacus in my office. Come to think of it, it hangs there still, in my current den, in a place of honor right next to my framed reminder that Manchester United (the soccer team) is FOREVER UNITED. But in a way I skipped over an entire period of calculation, much as (as luck would have it) I was always either too young or too old to fight in the unceasing wars that extended over my three-score and thirteen. Thus I went from slips of paper on to gargantuan calculators the size of a small printer right on to hand-held calculators and then on to the computer. I skipped over a the whole magnificent technology of the slide rule, my father’s instrument.

But I hasten to say that I’m not intending to delve into history here. I owe the inspiration of this post to a neighbor, a six-foot-four octogenarian with snow-white hair and a face only the decades can fashion. He builds wood canoes in his garage, but garage it hardly is: it is a workshop filled with interesting tools and fixtures, not visible to the naked eye even inside. I pass his place on my walks and sometimes stop to chat. Yesterday I learned from Skip about the Fuller calculator. It is a cylindrical slide-rule; it is two cylinders one nested inside the other. For a picture of one, you might look here.

Skip owned and sold one on e-bay and realized $1,800 for it. It turns out that he’d spent many years in the railroad industry. The women who determined how to allocate freight income used Fuller calculators. The complexities of that task are many. A shipment begins with Railroad X but, as it moves, it’s transferred, say, for four different segments to Railroads A, B, C, and D. D finally delivers the shipment to trucks. In this movement the same freight charge must be shredded five different ways, all depending on distance. But since the freight moves by a car owned by Railroad X, it gets a demurrage, so-called, for use of its cars, which must also be calculated and deducted from the total freight before it’s parceled out. Heavy, serious calculation is involved. And long before computers shouldered these elegant devices out of the way, the Fullers did the job. Their virtue lay in speed and accuracy. These slide rules could give you results out to eleven decimal points!

It turns out that there are several different kinds. To give you the picture of one, I will mention the Bygrave A.M.L. Position Slide Rule used in aerial navigation. It was easy enough to use rapidly to help airmen find out where they were. Bygrave, the inventor, was Captain L.G. Bygrave, Royal Air Force. A.M.L. stands for Air Ministry Laboratories.

I never learned to use a slide rule—although, working for an engineering outfit once, I had the brilliant idea to have a bunch of small ones manufactured, colored green. We sent them to prospective clients with a slogan like “Work with Pritchard and calculate your Green on these.” Or a thought to that effect. Folks, I was a mere 24 or something then, in the stone age…

Still, these wondrous mechanical instruments, no batteries needed for very high accuracy, remind me that there was calculation before the bit and the byte, and serious calculation at that, and that the tools may change but human skill and ingenuity are an inexhaustible well of invention.

—————

Picture credit for the Bygrave slide rule goes to Wikipedia here.

In a move long expected by observers, Thomson Reuters acquired a premier UK Corporate Tax Compliance system – the only questions over previous months had been when would it happen, and would it be Abacus or AlphaTax. Today that question has been answered – see the following stories in the FT, AccountingWeb, AccountancyAge and the official press release from Thomson Reuters.

Already there are a number of big questions cropping up as a result off the transaction, such as `What will Sage think?`, `What will TCSL think`? & `How does TUPE affect my company car?`.

If the last two years have been about disruption in the personal tax software market, with Thomson Reuters buying Digita, CCH & MYOB `merging` and a number of Big firms changing provider, then the next two years are surely to become an equally disruptive time in the corporate tax software market.

ABACUS is surely a big name for everyone interested in rock music. The band formed in 1971 made their breakthrough at the Germersheim rock festival, where ABACUS drew not less applause from the 300,000 visitors than PINK FLOYD, SANTANA or ELP which appeared on stage as well. Jürgen Wimpelberg takes on himself to play keyboards, guitars, drum programming as well as vocals.

Crossover Prog • Germany

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Pipedream Revisited Part 1 & II
2. Cappucino
3. Don’t Beat So On The Horses
4. Song For Brunhilde
5. Song For John And Yoko
6. Radbod Blues
7. Chestholder

Line-up / Musicians

- Felix Hans / drums, percussion
- Charlie Schade / guitar, sitar
- Chris Barutzky / keyboards
- Chris Williams / vocal
- Konstantin Bommarius / drums, percussion

Abacus is the device used for the calculation purposes. Basically it was used in various parts of Asia to perform arithmetic. Today it is utilized for the mental growth of the child performing well in mathematics.

Today, Abacus Institution in Delhi is playing a crucial role the real development of the child’s brain doing mathematics sums. Abacus institution helps developing learning math’s basics so that he or she can do better in future. Learning abacus keeps the fear off from the child of mathematics.

We, Global Path, help the child developing their brains doing mathematics. We are among those who have quality abacus institution in Delhi and in other states as franchisee.

This is a picture of my stschoty, the type of abacus developed and used in the Russian Empire, and through the lamentable Soviet period.  While it has now been eclipsed by cash registers and calculators (like the one sitting next to it), I still make use of it just to stay in practice.  When I used to run our parish bookstore and candle stand I would bring it with me and add up the week’s receipts.

The Russian Empire introduced decimal coinage and currency with the coinage reforms of Tsar Peter the Great.  The Abacus is set up for decimal work in the market place and the tax man’s office.  This makes the stschoty ready to use with U.S. money.  I actually have added markings for cent, nickel, dime, quarter, dollar, etc. to it just to help teach the occasional interested student.

The whole abacus is large, much larger than the typical Chinese souvenir abacus one normally finds for sale in one’s local China town (I have a nice one of these too).  I also find the stschoty easier to use than it’s Chinese cousin, if only because I am much more practiced with the Russian model.

Here are three interesting sites about the stschoty and how to use this interesting calculating device.  Thanks to the Internet, one can learn to use an ancient analog calculator by practicing online.

Russian Abacus

Russicher Abakus

Russian Abacus (Java Applet)

A child always tries to learn things from his or her surroundings. But some times he/she fails while doing calculations. We are not talking about the infancy or child of below 3 years. Many of the children have the problem of solving mathematics. They get puzzled or confused while doing just simple sums. This leads them to the future failures.

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