in Technology

How Chinese Multiply

Ever wondered how Chinese multiply so quickly? Ravi sent me this video a while ago and I did not see it thinking it may have objectionable content! When I saw it, I was amazed!

Could you ever think of this? It’s a great maths trick. I don’t know how it would multiply 10 x 10, or for that matter any number which is a 10 multiple. Do you have an idea?

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  1. Useless stuff….what happens if you have to multiply 988 with 789…you’ll be left with lots of lines…..only useful if u have 2-3 digit numbers with small digit value

  2. To multiply 10×10 and the like, you could multiply the value of the last set of dots of a number by 10.

    Then again, while that works for something simple like 23*40, it still doesn’t directly work for 10*10. So not quite there yet. Still, interesting!

    Though seriously, just use a calculator. 🙂

  3. Of course it works for 10×10! You just have to imagine a non-line without intersections. if you draw the 0 non-line dashed you obtain two intersecting dashed lines, two intersections between a dashed line and a solid line, and one proper intersection. From that you can see the proper placement of the 1.

  4. It works wonderfully for multiplying even 4 digit numbers..and multiples of 10 too, all u do is that you dont draw any lines for the zero (lets say sort of like, removing the zero for the moment) and then once you get an answer, just put the zero back at the end of the figure.
    So 10 X 10 would give a figure that looks like + that is 1 line each for the two numbers, removing the zeroes from each. And that gives us 1 intersection point..so the number we get is 1 . Then we just put back the two zeroes we removed and we get a 100. I tried 410 X 323 and it still worked 😀 😀 You’ve just got to remember to put the zeroes back at the end.