Multiplication: The Vedic Way

Comments (8)

1. Alan Miesch says . . . | December 13, 2010 / 8:31 pm

   My Japanese wife says she has never seen such a way of multiplying. But very interesting anyway!

2. Ines says . . . | December 13, 2010 / 10:33 pm

   Vedic Maths! :-)

3. Tony says . . . | December 14, 2010 / 5:39 am

   Yeah apparently it’s not Japanese, but Vedic.. check out this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vedic_mathematics

4. Dr Silverrose says . . . | December 17, 2010 / 10:41 am

   This is really no different from multiplying the way we (westerners) do it with digits: multiply each digit in one number by each digit in the other, and carry over as needed. It seems to be a bit faster our way, especially for multi-digit multiplication, because you don’t have to draw all those lines.

5. Dr Silverrose says . . . | December 17, 2010 / 11:05 am

   Actually, it’s not really multi-digit multiplication that is a pain to do this way (with lines), it’s high-digit multiplication. Try multiplying 89 x 78 using lines, and you’ll quickly go back to multiplying the way you were taught.

6. Jen says . . . | December 18, 2010 / 7:40 pm

   This is not a Japanese means of teaching multiplication, but Vedic.

7. Ramasubramaniyan says . . . | January 6, 2011 / 9:19 am

   This method is ok for small numbers such from 1 to 5 but for 6,7… it is tedious to work out but this method of multiplicaion is suitable to teach for kids so that don’t get out of maths

8. Sarah says . . . | January 23, 2011 / 10:57 pm

   Don’t be silly, Doctor.
   It’s not the lines that make this easier and faster, it’s the orientation of the multiplicands, the order that you do the multiplication and adding.
   In the western way, you make a large intermediate answer for every place in your multiplicand. So for 193×16, you get the answers for 193×6 and 193×10 before you get anything.
   The flaw in this is that you’re always going to be adding the result of every one place digit by another one place digit, ten place multiplied by a one place together, then adding every ten by ten and hundred by one together and so on, but instead of performing *those* operations relevant to the final answer, we make a series of intermediate answers that are spaced with place holding zeros. When you’re doing a three digit number by a three digit number, the amount of added steps is really slow and cumbersome, and except for the first operation, these intermediate answers don’t give you any of the digits in the answer.
   In this version, the vedic version, regardless of whether or not you draw any lines, you get the answers for each place digit individually.
   So, typical western way goes like this: multiply, carry, add, carry, get the answer.
   The vedic way, you multiply, add, carry, and then you have a digit from the answer. Each intermediate answer is simply another digit of your final answer, not a strange large number that serves merely as an opportunity to make a mistake. The third time I tried the vedic way, I got an answer pretty quickly, then I checked my work using the way I’d grown up with, and the answers didn’t match. I used a calculator–the vedic way was correct, the western way had several mistakes, even though I took longer to do it.