@ your library (R) ......by Paige Turner October 21, 2004

"SPOOK-tacular" Halloween Party

The "SPOOK-tacularly" friendly librarians @ your library (R) will be holding their annual "SPOOK-tacular" Halloween Party on Saturday, October 30, from 2-4 PM for all of Mammoth Lakes' little ghosts and goblins. Parents and children of all ages are welcome, however the program will be geared to children 8 years and under. There will be stories, crafts and goodies! And of course costumes are encouraged. The "Spook-tacular" librarians say, "Our party will have flying bats, pale white ghosts and big black cats. We hope you will come -- we're not that scary. Come have some fun at the Mammoth Library." Call 934-4777 for more information.

Hey kids, want to amaze your parents and teachers with a strange feat of multiplication? Tell them you learned this @ your library (r) and you'll really impress them! It is said that Ethiopian peasants never understood multiplication. They could, however, halve and double numbers with "counting pebbles" by dividing a number of pebbles into two equal parts to find half of the number, or duplicating a pile of pebbles to double the number. From this primitive beginning they developed an ingenious "multiplication system" that baffles most Western observers.

Suppose a merchant wanted to buy 15 goats at, say, $13 apiece. We would calculate the cost by simple multiplication (15 x $13 = $195). To see how the Ethiopian would find it, make two columns and label them HALF and DOUBLE. Write 13 under one column and 15 under the other. Either number can go in either column, but for the sake of this example put 13 under the HALF column and 15 under the DOUBLE. Now half the 13 to get 6-1/2. Cross out the 1/2 and ignore it ( Ethiopians don't understand fractions). Then double the 15 to get 30. Continue halving the numbers in the HALF column and doubling the numbers in the DOUBLE column, row by row and discarding all fractions, until the HALF column reaches 1 (the DOUBLE column should say 120).
At this point Ethiopians invoked an ancient superstition. They considered that any "pair" of numbers with an even number in the HALF column was evil and had to be destroyed. In our example, go back and scratch out the "pair" 6 and 30. Finally add the remaining numbers in the DOUBLE column and there's your answer: 195. It works!!!

Try the system with any pair of numbers, large or small. It will always work. Why? Mathematicians say that if we were more familiar with the binary number system we would find the procedure intuitively obvious. But most of us, accustomed to thinking in decimal numbers, find Ethiopian pebble multiplication almost incomprehensible, a curious set of haphazard rules that somehow, more by magic than math, invariably leads to the correct answer. So, pick a pair of numbers, go to work and amaze your audience!

TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE WEEK: If this Halloween you happen to see a "witch" passing in front of the moon, she won't be riding just any kind of broom. Do you know what kind of broom it will be?
ANSWER TO LAST WEEK'S QUESTION: The ever-popular log cabin can be found all over the Eastern Sierra. In fact we often consider the log cabin as American as Abe Lincoln and apple pie. But we have to give credit to Sweden where the log cabin originated.