Chinese calculations error? confused!

[antonioacuna]

Hi,

In several chinese books dealing with the Plum Blossom oracle, the instructions to obtain the lower trigram (one of the methods)states that once you have the number as a result of adding the hour, day, month and year (and adding to a single number the result) you divide by 8, well in all examples they come up with reminders that my calculator does not come up with, such as 30 by 8 gives 3 with a reminder of 6, well my calculator says the result is 3.75, where does the 6 comes from? I have asked several chines expert, including MrWang Yang, author of The Original I Ching' but the answer is confusing, I.E as an answer of an example like the one above (reminder of 4)

If you look at (2+3+19+12)/8=4...4 (four being the remainder) the result is 4 and 4/8, or the second 4 is just the numerator above the denominator 8, so it does not mean that the result is 4.5....

Any ideas? the same happens in Lillian Too's book The New I Ching.

[pargenton]

Hi,
they talk about the reminder (modulus?) operator, that is, taking your example, 30 mod 8 gives 6 in this way:
1) use the normal division 30/8 = 3.75
2) the integer part is 3
3) multiply by 8, i.e 3 * 8 = 24
4) the reminder is 30-24 = 6

In other words, use integer only, the reminder is what is left after the integer division (30/8 = 3, 30-3*8 = 6)
Hope this helps
Paolo

[antonioacuna]

Thanks! but I think they should explain this to the readers, most readers will assume they are talking about the reminder from a simple division, is that a method favoured in China? it just seems odd that they would not explain how they arrived at those numbers when their instructions are clearly divide this by this and use the reminder, which in most people's mind would be the number after the decimal point of the result...

Antonio

[heylise]

Before decimal points and calculators, people counted oranges, pennies or people. They all have no remainder, a person can be one whole person, but not 2/3s of a person.

If you count on your fingers, how many bags of 6 oranges can be filled when you have 34 oranges, you get 5 bags, and a remainder of 4...

LiSe