There is another way to count on your fingers. You don't count the fingers themselves, you count the lines on the fingers, the tops of the fingers and the bases of the fingernail.

By counting the lines, tops of fingers, and bases of nails you get 5 units on each finger. The thumb has 4 units, two lines, top of finger and base of nail. So the units equal 24. The closed fist is zero. The open hand is another form of zero.

We are now in base 25. On one hand we have 24 units plus a positional zero. We have two hands. So the left hand is units and the right hand is 10's. (Remember, in base 25 the numeral 10 = 25 units.)

So by combining the left and right hands, you can count to 624. Can you guess the next step?

As I was traveling to work on the trolley one day, I noticed a woman's left hand. She was married, so she had a band and a diamond ring. All at once, I could see the next step as plain as day. The rings act as place holders. So the left hand is units, the right hand is 10's place (base sensitive numeral, 10 has different values in different bases), and the rings take the counts even higher.

Actually, it works better with those little rubber bands that girls use to hold braids. You need 5 little rubber bands of different colors. Each color will represent an increasing power of base 25. The first rubber band will represent bundles of 625. The next rubber band will represent bundles of 15,625. Etc. Eventually, you can use 5 rubber bands and your two hands to count to over 6 billion. That's how many people are on the planet. 'You've got the whole world in your hands'.

Of course, you can use it for more than numbers. You can use it for everything from letters to gene pairs. Additionally, even when you are sure that you are interpreting numbers, this system is not only good for base 25. It is equally good for every base system below 25.

I think the Buddhist Statues are doing this. I was able to reconstruct the system after watching Tibetan nuns counting at the market. They don't know about the right hand. They don't study math. The system is passed from parent to child.

Some of the people I questioned didn't count the top of the finger and the base of the nail, just the lines. But one of my students assured me that her way was 'correct'. Her way enabled base 25.

This system allows counting without knowing any numbers. For instance, if you are counting sheep as they walk into a gate, you can count up to 624 sheep with only your two hands.

If you just can't see it, email me at [email protected] and I'll send you the illustration.