In our childhood, we are taught of counting with fingers. Regardless of the age, people continue to use these techniques to ease up calculations that come across in day to day living. While your fingers allow you to count and represent up to 10, did you know that there is an insane potential capacity of number representation by your digits(fingers).The Inspiration
I'm sure at some point of your life, some of you guys have wished for that extra finger when you happen to be counting something and realize that you are running short of fingers. May be your toes or a piece of paper could have come to your rescue. Anyway, here are a few ways how to do more counting than usual(counting more than 10) with those same fingers.
Finger Counting
Before diving in, lets have a look at the basics. Normal human hands have 10 fingers in total. Each finger can have 2 states; a bent(folded) state and a straight extended(unfolded) state. Numbers are reflected by the amount of fingers bent or extended. While, this has the advantage of allowing easy flexible expression regardless of which fingers are bent(or extended), it limits expression to 10 numerals.
Chinese Number Gestures
Meanwhile, There is a Chinese finger counting method which allows 10 numeral representations with a single hand. When both hands are used together, it can be used to count up to 100. However, this system utilizes forming shapes with the hand to gain this benefit. So, it might take a while to get used to before you can use it without messing it up.
Chisanbop Finger Counting Method
This system allows counting up to hundred without the use of forming shapes with fingers. It is much the same as the traditional counting except that the thumb is spared as a switch so that 10 representations are possible with each hand. It is an excellent improved system once you get used to but still requiring some effort to read based on the thumbs.
Finger Binary
If base 2(binary) representation is used, it will allow our fingers to represent 210 different representations; ie. 1024 numbers, counting numbers up to 1023. Unlike above methods, each finger here represents its own unique value. Therefore, which fingers are used in the representation does matter. While this has the advantage of insane data representation capacity, it comes at a huge cost of mental effort. Besides, it can be easily misread if not careful.
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| Finger Binary: Values represented by each finger |
Base of 6 Technique (My Input)
An alternative technique would be to make use of both the above concepts and combine them.
Since there are 5 fingers in each hand, One hand can represent 6 states(based on count of extended or flexed fingers); ie 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. By assigning two different values to fingers based on which hand they belong to, counting work space can be expanded.
For example, fingers of my right hand counts a value of 1 each and my left hand fingers counts a value of 6 each. By using both hands at the same time, it becomes possible to represent 62; that is 36 numerals.
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| Example gestures: Counting with Base of 6 |
It may not be the best, but its simpler and you can definitely count greater than 10. And yeah, when I came across Chisanbop, I realized this is a compromised implementation.
Conclusion
Counting with fingers may not be the most practicable or comfortable thing to do. But it's always a good idea to know its limitations and workarounds. Who knows when it could come in handy! Next time, you'll be able to count without using your toes!! :D
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_number_gestureshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chisanbop
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