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I realized something: he doesn't know numbers. With the abacus, you don't have to memorize a lot of arithmetic combinations; all you have to do is to learn to push the little beads up and down. You don't have to memorize 9+7=16; you just know that when you add 9, you push a ten's bead up and pull a one's bead down. So we're slower at basic arithmetic, but we know numbers.
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