Last Thursday, our tutor read a story called “The Best Accountant” to our Discussion Group, and it  stimulated discussion about the abilities of people doing that kind of work.  I told a story about a clerk who had difficult determining a discount, but I didn’t mention that I also had a similar problem.

            During the Cultural Revolution, there were no classes in schools; however, the teachers had to be there anyway.  Some of them played Chinese chess, and others wandered like vagrants, yet the school’s accountant was always busy.  It seemed unfair, and I don’t remember who suggested it, but it was suddenly decided that one teacher would help him every day before leaving the school.  The teachers did that happily, and it provided the accountant with more free time.

            I had no calculator then, but was adept at using an abacus, as I had learned it when I was young.  Even though I had never kept accounts, mathematic had been easy for me from primary school through the university, so making the calculations we had to do should have been easy, but I found they weren’t.  In fact, they were so difficult for me that you may think that I’m distorting what really happened, but it’s the truth.

            The day my turn came, all the teachers had left the school, and only the accountant and I were still there.  I make the calculations many times and couldn’t get them to balance.  I checked again and again, and didn’t find an error.  The accountant kept looking impatiently at his watch as things seemed to be going from bad to worse.  The minutes ticked away, and when he finally helped me to check all the bills, he found the mistake right away; I had used 15.30 where I should have used 1.53.  I had put the decimal in the wrong place, and that caused a big problem.  I was grateful to him for his help but didn’t look forward to helping him again.  He laughed as he said good-bye, but I was ashamed for having done such bad job.

            What did I conclude from all this?  Was it poor math or mere carelessness?  It appeared to be carelessness, but it really reflected my feelings about math.  I hate adding a long list of  numbers and always accept my first total as being more or less correct.  That kind of work always upsets me.

            On the other hand, I used to like working with my grandchildren to help them learn the four basic fundamentals of arithmetic.  When they were little, we played a game called “24”; in which four number have to be used to reach 24 using ＋, －, ×, and ÷.  I was never unhappy when they frequently did it more quickly than I.  That game helped them in improving math, and increasing their interest in it. Some of them are now in middle school and high school, and they get high scores in math.  One of them even participated in the Olympic Math Competition. 

            Unlike me, they are all very good at arithmetic – even when they do it in their heads, so I’m convinced that heredity has little to do with the process..