A RUSSIAN CURIOSITY

Horowhenua Chronicle, 26 May 1916, Page 3

A RUSSIAN CURIOSITY

I Five-sixths of the people' in Russia tire peasants, of whom some 60 per cent are illiterate, and the rest *.re very poor schojars. In certain parte the multiplication table is unknown beyond "twice times,' although the people can add correctly. let they are able to perform multiplication sums of a rather advanced type by the following singular metthodu Suppose they wish to find the product of 57 and 89. Of these numbera it does not matter which is taken as a multiple or ahe other as the dividend, though of course they are quite ignorant of these learned terms. Let us take 57 as the dividend. The peasant divides it By '2, ignoring remainders, as often as possible, and the other number he multiplies by as often as he divides the first, and sets the result down in uwo columns thus:— 67 89 •28 178* •M 866* 7 712 3 1494 1 2843 He th#n strikes out those lines *n which an oven figure ends the dividend number—the figures noted by an asterisk in the illustration above—and adds up what is left in the multiplicand column. In this case the result is 5073. The method is infallible, copending as it does upon an important mathematical principle. The mystery is how they got to find the dodge, 'or to the average person it wouH seeon less remarkable to have the ability to learn I the multiplication table than to acquire this elaborate device.