posted
I read this with fascinating, Noemon, and also sent the link on to my son, since he did some kind of in-depth report on the Inca during his younger years.
I worked through the inter-active photos windows on this link site a couple times before I figured out what they were doing. (Then it was like - duh!)
posted
That is too cool. But I wonder why it starts out in Fibonacci numbers and then changes to powers of 10? Wouldn't it make more sense if it was just Fibonaccis all the way up? Or else all powers of 10? For that matter, a whole lot of different combinations of values for the cells would work as well.
And why are there two identical sides? The example they gave of adding two numbers would have worked equally well with only one set of depressions for putting corn kernels or stones into. Why are they mirror imaged with all cells duplicated except for the ones cell? To my mind those things still need explaining.
So how do you multiply two large numbers? Is there an algorithm for doing that too?
It's a really fascinating question, though. I love it when you post stuff like this, Noemon.
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posted
I am going to do a lesson on this with my students. I'm posting the gif of the board that I made, in the off chance that another teacher would want to use it.
posted
Cool story. Interesting method. I guess you could add up pretty much any number with only a limited amount of kernels or stones or whatever. How people deal with these necessities of civilaztion is always fascinating.
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