Since I started learning to use the soroban, or Japanese abacus, I have also picked up some fascinating features of certain numbers. Take 37 for example. I was given the finger exercise of 37 + 37 + 37 +37 +37 + ……………. , quite an interesting challenge on the abacus, but imagine my surprise when one of the totals came up as 111, then later up comes 222 then 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888, 999. It turns out that this is because 111 is 3 x 37, 222 is 6 x 37 and so on.
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