The Animated Abacus：（动画算盘）.pdfVIP

The Animated Abacus Pieter Jordaan 1 LIACS, Leiden University, Niels Bohrweg 1, Leiden, The Netherlands pieter_jordaan@ supervised by Fons Verbeek. fverbeek@liacs.nl Abstract. There are many programs to learn kids the basics of numbers. How- ever all these programs do this by examination and no program explains what addition, subtraction, division and multiplication mean. Kids are too young to understand abstract terms. We found a way to learn kids what addition, subtrac- tion, division and multiplication that is more persuasive than the traditional black board. 1 Introduction Programs that try to learn children mathematic operations are very common, but the problem is that all these programs are focused on examination and not on learning the abstract operators. Many children that are about 5 years old have trouble understand- ing abstract terms. 2 Problem definition The mathematical operators are very hard to explain to a kid, and so far the best way on primary schools is to teach it in class verbally. Some kids experience this as very boring, making it hard to teach them maths. This is mainly the case because most operators are learned by memorization and not by explaining why. For example, for a 3rd grade kid 5x10=50, just because that is said to be the answer. No logics are ex- plained making it harder for kids to understand any advanced mathematics. The computer is only used to examine if the kid knows the answers. The computer asks a question (like 1+1) and the child provides an answer. There is no program that tries to explain why 1+1 is equal to 2. It only says if you had the correct answer or not. That is why we think our