Who knew that there was another way to do simple substraction, and that it was called "Austrian substraction". Not me.
Those Europeans do funny things with numbers. Back in the day when I worked at a supermarket NZ abolished the 1 and 2 cent coins. When you paid with cash (a rarer and rarer occurence in the land of EFTPOS) change was given out in accordance with Swedish rounding. Change of 1 and 2 cent amounts became 0 cent, change of 3, 4, 6, and 7 cent amounts became 5 cents, and 8 and 9 were rounded up to 10 cents. It's curious how most of the English language links to the term are from NZ websites ...
Also apropros of the continents, my review of Giselle Byrnes book, The Waitangi Tribunal and New Zealand History, came out in History: Reviews of New Books. In the Asia section! Last time I looked, Australia and New Zealand were still somewhat distinct from Asia, but I concede that the recent earthquake may have changed things by a few centimetres. Culturally, they're still quite far apart as well ...
Posted by robe0419 at February 8, 2005 04:16 PM | TrackBackI'd never heard of this 'Austrian' method until I read that post either! It's neater than what we were taught, but far too late for me to change now, I think.... (Although when doing it in my head as opposed to writing down, I use the same sort of method that a lot of the other commenters describe.)
Posted by: Sharon at February 9, 2005 07:38 AM