The Trachtenberg system is a system of rapid mental calculation. The system consists of a number of readily memorized operations that allow one to perform arithmetic computations very quickly. It was developed by the Russian engineer Jakow Trachtenberg in order to keep his mind occupied while being in a Nazi concentration camp.
The rest of this article presents some methods devised by Trachtenberg. Some of the algorithms Trachtenberg developed are ones for general multiplication, division and addition. Also, the Trachtenberg system includes some specialised methods for multiplying small numbers between 5 and 13 (but shown here is 2–12).
The section on addition demonstrates an effective method of checking calculations that can also be applied to multiplication.
The method for general multiplication is a method to achieve multiplications with low space complexity, i.e. as few temporary results as possible to be kept in memory. This is achieved by noting that the final digit is completely determined by multiplying the last digit of the multiplicands. This is held as a temporary result. To find the next to last digit, we need everything that influences this digit: The temporary result, the last digit of times the next-to-last digit of , as well as the next-to-last digit of times the last digit of . This calculation is performed, and we have a temporary result that is correct in the final two digits.
In general, for each position in the final result, we sum for all :
People can learn this algorithm and thus multiply four-digit numbers in their head – writing down only the final result. They would write it out starting with the rightmost digit and finishing with the leftmost.
Trachtenberg defined this algorithm with a kind of pairwise multiplication where two digits are multiplied by one digit, essentially only keeping the middle digit of the result. By performing the above algorithm with this pairwise multiplication, even fewer temporary results need to be held.
Example:
To find the first (rightmost) digit of the answer, start at the first digit of the multiplicand
To find the second digit of the answer, start at the second digit of the multiplicand:
To find the third digit of the answer, start at the third digit of the multiplicand:
To find the fourth digit of the answer, start at the fourth digit of the multiplicand:
Continue with the same method to obtain the remaining digits.
Trachtenberg called this the 2 Finger Method. The calculations for finding the fourth digit from the example above are illustrated at right. The arrow from the nine will always point to the digit of the multiplicand directly above the digit of the answer you wish to find, with the other arrows each pointing one digit to the right. Each arrow head points to a UT Pair, or Product Pair. The vertical arrow points to the product where we will get the Units digit, and the sloping arrow points to the product where we will get the Tens digits of the Product Pair. If an arrow points to a space with no digit there is no calculation for that arrow. As you solve for each digit you will move each of the arrows over the multiplicand one digit to the left until all of the arrows point to prefixed zeros.
Division in the Trachtenberg System is done much the same as in multiplication but with subtraction instead of addition. Splitting the dividend into smaller Partial Dividends, then dividing this Partial Dividend by only the left-most digit of the divisor will provide the answer one digit at a time. As you solve each digit of the answer you then subtract Product Pairs (UT pairs) and also NT pairs (Number-Tens) from the Partial Dividend to find the next Partial Dividend. The Product Pairs are found between the digits of the answer so far and the divisor. If a subtraction results in a negative number you have to back up one digit and reduce that digit of the answer by one. With enough practice this method can be done in your head.
A method of adding columns of numbers and accurately checking the result without repeating the first operation. An intermediate sum, in the form of two rows of digits, is produced. The answer is obtained by taking the sum of the intermediate results with an L-shaped algorithm. As a final step, the checking method that is advocated both removes the risk of repeating any original errors and identifies the precise column in which an error occurs all at once. It is based on check (or digit) sums, such as the nines-remainder method.
For the procedure to be effective, the different operations used in each stage must be kept distinct, otherwise there is a risk of interference.
When performing any of these multiplication algorithms the following "steps" should be applied.
The answer must be found one digit at a time starting at the least significant digit and moving left. The last calculation is on the leading zero of the multiplicand.
Each digit has a neighbor, i.e., the digit on its right. The rightmost digit's neighbor is the trailing zero.
The 'halve' operation has a particular meaning to the Trachtenberg system. It is intended to mean "half the digit, rounded down" but for speed reasons people following the Trachtenberg system are encouraged to make this halving process instantaneous. So instead of thinking "half of seven is three and a half, so three" it's suggested that one thinks "seven, three". This speeds up calculation considerably. In this same way the tables for subtracting digits from 10 or 9 are to be memorized.
And whenever the rule calls for adding half of the neighbor, always add 5 if the current digit is odd. This makes up for dropping 0.5 in the next digit's calculation.
Digits and numbers are two different notions. The number T consists of n digits cn ... c1.
Proof
Rule:
Example: 8624 × 2
Working from left to right:
Example: 76892 × 2
Working from left to right:
Proof
Rule:
Example: 492 × 3 = 1476
Working from right to left:
Proof
Rule:
Example: 346 × 4 = 1384
Working from right to left:
Proof
Rule:
Example: 42×5=210
Proof
Rule:
Example: 357 × 6 = 2142
Working right to left:
Proof
Rule:
Example: 693 × 7 = 4,851
Working from right to left:
Proof
Rule:
Example: 456 × 8 = 3648
Working from right to left:
Proof
Rule:
For rules 9, 8, 4, and 3 only the first digit is subtracted from 10. After that each digit is subtracted from nine instead.
Example: 2,130 × 9 = 19,170
Working from right to left:
Add 0 (zero) as the rightmost digit.
Proof
Proof
Rule:
Example:
To illustrate:
Thus,
Proof
Rule: to multiply by 12:
Starting from the rightmost digit, double each digit and add the neighbor. (The "neighbor" is the digit on the right.)
If the answer is greater than a single digit, simply carry over the extra digit (which will be a 1 or 2) to the next operation. The remaining digit is one digit of the final result.
Example:
Determine neighbors in the multiplicand 0316:
Proof
The book contains specific algebraic explanations for each of the above operations.
Most of the information in this article is from the original book.
The algorithms/operations for multiplication, etc., can be expressed in other more compact ways that the book does not specify, despite the chapter on algebraic description. [lower-alpha 1]
The 2017 American film Gifted revolves around a child prodigy who at the age of 7 impresses her teacher by doing calculations in her head using the Trachtenberg system. [2]
There are many other methods of calculation in mental mathematics. The list below shows a few other methods of calculating, though they may not be entirely mental.
In mathematics, the Chinese remainder theorem states that if one knows the remainders of the Euclidean division of an integer n by several integers, then one can determine uniquely the remainder of the division of n by the product of these integers, under the condition that the divisors are pairwise coprime.
In linear algebra, the rank of a matrix A is the dimension of the vector space generated by its columns. This corresponds to the maximal number of linearly independent columns of A. This, in turn, is identical to the dimension of the vector space spanned by its rows. Rank is thus a measure of the "nondegenerateness" of the system of linear equations and linear transformation encoded by A. There are multiple equivalent definitions of rank. A matrix's rank is one of its most fundamental characteristics.
In Boolean logic, a formula is in conjunctive normal form (CNF) or clausal normal form if it is a conjunction of one or more clauses, where a clause is a disjunction of literals; otherwise put, it is a product of sums or an AND of ORs. As a canonical normal form, it is useful in automated theorem proving and circuit theory.
In statistics, a k-thpercentile, also known as percentile score or centile, is a score below which a given percentage k of scores in its frequency distribution falls or a score at or below which a given percentage falls. Percentiles are expressed in the same unit of measurement as the input scores, not in percent; for example, if the scores refer to human weight, the corresponding percentiles will be expressed in kilograms or pounds. In the limit of an infinite sample size, the percentile approximates the percentile function, the inverse of the cumulative distribution function.
Casting out nines is any of three arithmetical procedures:
Multi-index notation is a mathematical notation that simplifies formulas used in multivariable calculus, partial differential equations and the theory of distributions, by generalising the concept of an integer index to an ordered tuple of indices.
In number theory, a self number or Devlali number in a given number base is a natural number that cannot be written as the sum of any other natural number and the individual digits of . 20 is a self number, because no such combination can be found. 21 is not, because it can be written as 15 + 1 + 5 using n = 15. These numbers were first described in 1949 by the Indian mathematician D. R. Kaprekar.
A divisibility rule is a shorthand and useful way of determining whether a given integer is divisible by a fixed divisor without performing the division, usually by examining its digits. Although there are divisibility tests for numbers in any radix, or base, and they are all different, this article presents rules and examples only for decimal, or base 10, numbers. Martin Gardner explained and popularized these rules in his September 1962 "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American.
In mathematics, Hensel's lemma, also known as Hensel's lifting lemma, named after Kurt Hensel, is a result in modular arithmetic, stating that if a univariate polynomial has a simple root modulo a prime number p, then this root can be lifted to a unique root modulo any higher power of p. More generally, if a polynomial factors modulo p into two coprime polynomials, this factorization can be lifted to a factorization modulo any higher power of p.
In information theory, the bar product of two linear codes C2 ⊆ C1 is defined as
P′′ is a primitive computer programming language created by Corrado Böhm in 1964 to describe a family of Turing machines.
Methods of computing square roots are algorithms for approximating the non-negative square root of a positive real number . Since all square roots of natural numbers, other than of perfect squares, are irrational, square roots can usually only be computed to some finite precision: these methods typically construct a series of increasingly accurate approximations.
The Blum–Goldwasser (BG) cryptosystem is an asymmetric key encryption algorithm proposed by Manuel Blum and Shafi Goldwasser in 1984. Blum–Goldwasser is a probabilistic, semantically secure cryptosystem with a constant-size ciphertext expansion. The encryption algorithm implements an XOR-based stream cipher using the Blum-Blum-Shub (BBS) pseudo-random number generator to generate the keystream. Decryption is accomplished by manipulating the final state of the BBS generator using the private key, in order to find the initial seed and reconstruct the keystream.
A decimal representation of a non-negative real number r is its expression as a sequence of symbols consisting of decimal digits traditionally written with a single separator:
In the mathematical theory of probability, a Doob martingale is a stochastic process that approximates a given random variable and has the martingale property with respect to the given filtration. It may be thought of as the evolving sequence of best approximations to the random variable based on information accumulated up to a certain time.
In mathematics, a Witt vector is an infinite sequence of elements of a commutative ring. Ernst Witt showed how to put a ring structure on the set of Witt vectors, in such a way that the ring of Witt vectors over the finite field of order is isomorphic to , the ring of -adic integers. They have a highly non-intuitive structure upon first glance because their additive and multiplicative structure depends on an infinite set of recursive formulas which do not behave like addition and multiplication formulas for standard p-adic integers.
In probability theory and theoretical computer science, McDiarmid's inequality is a concentration inequality which bounds the deviation between the sampled value and the expected value of certain functions when they are evaluated on independent random variables. McDiarmid's inequality applies to functions that satisfy a bounded differences property, meaning that replacing a single argument to the function while leaving all other arguments unchanged cannot cause too large of a change in the value of the function.
A repeating decimal or recurring decimal is a decimal representation of a number whose digits are eventually periodic ; if this sequence consists only of zeros, the decimal is said to be terminating, and is not considered as repeating. It can be shown that a number is rational if and only if its decimal representation is repeating or terminating. For example, the decimal representation of 1/3 becomes periodic just after the decimal point, repeating the single digit "3" forever, i.e. 0.333.... A more complicated example is 3227/555, whose decimal becomes periodic at the second digit following the decimal point and then repeats the sequence "144" forever, i.e. 5.8144144144.... Another example of this is 593/53, which becomes periodic after the decimal point, repeating the 13-digit pattern "1886792452830" forever, i.e. 11.18867924528301886792452830....
In mathematics, the Schuette–Nesbitt formula is a generalization of the inclusion–exclusion principle. It is named after Donald R. Schuette and Cecil J. Nesbitt.
In mathematics, a profinite integer is an element of the ring
This section's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines.(July 2022) |