Traditional Abacus and Bead Arithmetic

advanced Using an Abacus alt=Allegory of a traditional division exercise|center|thumb|450x450px|孤雁歸隊 (Gūyàn guīduì) The lone geese return to flock. Allegory of a traditional division exercise with abacus (998001/999) thumb|Traditional Chinese abacus illustrating the suspended bead useThis textbook is an introduction to the Traditional Beads Arithmetic (珠算; zhūsuàn in Chinese, shuzan in Japanese), or the use of the eastern fixed-bead abacus (算盤, suanpan in Chinese, soroban in Japanese) as practiced in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, etc. for at least four centuries. Chinese beads arithmetic has been inscribed in 2013 on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, however, the information available in English on this subject is scant and scattered, so it is worth the effort of trying to gather it somewhere, for instance, in this book. This text is aimed at those who already have a basic level in the use of the abacus following the Modern Method currently taught and who wish to delve into the history of their favorite instrument and mathematics in the Far East. After studying this text and practicing its content, the reader should be able to perform calculations according to the Traditional Method using any type of eastern abacus and understand (whenever possible) why they were done that way. Table of content 75% /Introduction/ 75% /Addition and subtraction/ 100% Use of the 5th lower bead 100% Extending the 123456789 exercise 50% /Division/ 75% Modern and traditional division; close relatives 75% Guide to traditional division (帰除法) 100% Learning the division table 75% Dealing with overflow 75% Traditional division examples 50% Special division tables 75% Division by powers of two 50% Multiplication 75% /Roots/ 75% Square root 75% Cube root 75% Appendix: Abbreviated operations 75% Bibliography 100% Contributors 100% Resources for contributors 75% Mathematics history History of Computation T