Subtracting with Gerbert’s abacus
Subtracting on an abacus 9 1 7 - 6 4 2
Subtracting on an abacus Start with the hundreds: 9 – 6 = 3
Subtracting on an abacus Now go to the tens: We have 1 – 4.
Subtracting on an abacus Since 4 is larger than 1, we go to the hundreds column and split the 3 into 2 and 1.
Subtracting on an abacus Now we have eleven tens, so we can subtract 4 from them to get 7 tens.
Subtracting on an abacus Now we have eleven tens, so we can subtract 4 from them to get 7 tens.
Subtracting on an abacus Finally, we go to the ones column and subtract 2 from 7.
Subtracting on an abacus The final answer is 275.