Ben Daubney

How Japanese children learn multiplication

Another example of the innocent fun I used to post. On 9th April 2013, I posted this image without attribution but with a note:

A photograph of a Post-It note. At the top is the sum ‘13x12’. Below this to the left is a diagram where 13 is shown as one line followed by three vertically, and 12 is shown as one line followed by two vertically bisecting the others. A glyph in the background circles the top-left intersecting lines (1), a circle around the top-right and bottom-left interecting lines (5), and a circle around the bottom-right intersecting lines (6). To the right is the note ‘= 156’

This is how Japanese children learn multiplication. Clever!

It's so simple. A little glyph's all you need to remember: the top-left is the hundreds, top-right and bottom-left added together are the tens, and the bottom-right is the units.

(I just tried doing the same thing with some bigger numbers and I think it falls apart or gets really complex, but maybe I've just not had that Japanese kindergarten training drilled into me.)

I wonder where this was first seen? A forum? Reddit? Twitter? Who knows.

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