Mexican Folk Arithmetic Algorithm Makes Perfect Sense

Authors

Julio C. Urenda, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Christian Servin, El Paso Community CollegeFollow
Olga Kosheleva, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Vladik Kreinovich, The The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

3-1-2021

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-21-21a

Published in Julia Rayz, Victor Raskin, Scott Dick, and Vladik Kreinovich (eds.), Explainable AI and Other Applications of Fuzzy Techniques, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society NAFIPS'2021, West Lafayette, Indiana, June 7-9, 2021, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2022, pp. 453-460

Abstract

Traditional algorithms for addition and multiplication -- that we all study at school -- start with the lowest possible digits. Interestingly, many people in Mexico use a different algorithm, in which operations start with the highest digits. We show that in many situations, this alternative algorithm is indeed more efficient -- especially in typical practical situations when we know the values -- that we need to add or subtract -- only with uncertainty.