To turn those four children, who were young, illiterate, and nearly blank slates, into useful helpers, Li Yu needed to provide them with so essential training.
First up was teaching them nural notation and basic arithtic.
Since nurals are one of the important cornerstones of civilization, almost all modern natural sciences can’t do without nurical operations, especially the deeper one delves into their studies—reaching master’s and doctoral levels—when one can truly appreciate the importance of mathematics as a research tool.
Aside from these cutting-edge research fields, nurals also play an extrely important role in everyday life.
Without nurals, transactions couldn’t be conducted, it would be hard to express how many sheep one ax could exchange for, and even the most fundantal statistical tasks couldn’t be undertaken.
The many civilizations on the Bratis Continent, of course, had their nural systems.
Take, for example, the currently popular Elf nurals that Li Yu learned about from Mr. Anton, which had a counting thod quite similar to Roman nurals.
Basically, a few symbols were chosen to represent different numbers, and then through the sequence of writing, these symbols were added or subtracted to represent the desired number.
The advantage of this counting system is that you only need to learn about five or six characters to write all the numbers, while the disadvantage is also obvious, as it lacks a positional value system.
In Li Yu’s universe, when you write a number, such as 219, everyone knows that the second position’s 1 represents 10, and the first position’s 2 actually represents 200.
However, in Elf nurals or Roman nurals, there is no concept of positional value, and they basically just pile up a string of symbols, which brings a problem: when you first look at it, it is actually not clear what number it represents.
You need to perform a calculation with all the existing symbols to find out the exact number.
This is undoubtedly very ti-consuming and increases the risk of making mistakes.
Therefore, Li Yu, in order to carry out statistical work and basic operations smoothly in the future, introduced Arabic nurals without hesitation.
He taught the four children the numbers from 0 to 9.
Just rembering ten abstract symbols wasn’t too difficult, even Aaron, the youngest among the group, didn’t spend much ti before he could fluently write the numbers that Li Yu dictated.
But the challenge ca when they moved beyond 10 and introduced addition and subtraction, though luckily, although the Elf nurals were cumberso, they still used the decimal system, not the binary system like computers, or the more arcane systems like duodecimal or quindecimal.
Otherwise, Li Yu didn’t know how long it would take to get these children to reaccept the decimal system.
When it ca to simple multiplication and division, the intellectual differences between the children beca even more apparent.
After Li Yu introduced the multiplication table, which is akin to a nightmare for elentary students, a little girl nad Nicole, though always trying to morize, clearly lagged behind the other three.
She was obviously anxious, soon breaking into a sweat, but the more anxious she beca, the worse her morization efficiency was, reciting in jumbled confusion.
"Six sevens are forty-eight, seven sevens... seven sevens..." Nicole felt her mind was all muddled, clutching her hair, squatting on the ground, her little face full of despair.
"Don’t rush, if you can’t morize it today, just morize it for a couple more days, and I’ll check your work next ti I co. Being a bit early or late doesn’t make much difference," Li Yu said.
He didn’t just say this to comfort Nicole, as Li Yu’s goal wasn’t to train these four children into mathematicians, but rather he hoped they could master the basic operations of grades two or three in elentary school, which was enough for the current stage.
The quality of their aptitude really wasn’t that important.
Moreover, a day for Li Yu was like three days here, and he wasn’t in a rush. Compared to that, he valued the attitude toward learning and working more.
Thus far, he was quite satisfied with that aspect, whether it was Nicole or the other three children, all of them were seriously learning.
Even though they didn’t yet know the usefulness of the knowledge they were acquiring, just being able to eat well every day, having a day off every five days, and receiving silver coins were enough to keep them motivated.
Nicole acted as if she hadn’t heard Li Yu’s words, still repeating with closed eyes, "Seven, seven, seven, seven..."
"That’s forty-nine, you know."
A voice drifted past Nicole’s ear. Li Yu turned his head and saw that the speaker was Clara.
The little maid had been quite happy recently because Fosto had tasked her with accompanying Li Yu and fulfilling all his various needs.
And Li Yu’s needs were rely to wander around, chat with people, and ask all sorts of bizarre questions.
Clara too could go out with this Foreigner in black clothes, enjoy the breeze outside the castle, bask in the sun, and sll the fresh grass. While Li Yu was talking to people, the little maid would pick flowers and grass, making various little animals to play with.
Not to ntion that every ti Li Yu ca, he would go to duel with Mr. Anton, no, not right, attend classes. During this ti, Clara had the chance to slack off, so right now, she was most looking forward to Li Yu showing up.
However, in the past few days, Li Yu had suddenly taken it into his head to start teaching children, no longer running outside the castle. The little maid couldn’t continue ssing around with flowers anymore, and she wasn’t interested in those crooked symbols drawn on the ground, so she just stood by, yawning.
Li Yu didn’t mind her until Clara blurted out "forty-nine".
Actually, the little maid regretted it as soon as she finished speaking. Although she didn’t know why this Foreigner wanted to teach such strange things, obviously he was seriously busy at the mont, and Clara, as a maid, shouldn’t have interrupted.
But seeing Nicole’s pained expression, Clara couldn’t hold back.
However, she was quite familiar with Li Yu and, knowing that she had gotten into trouble, wasn’t too scared. She just sheepishly stuck out her tongue at Li Yu.
Li Yu then asked, "Seven tis eight..."
"Fifty-six," said the little maid offhandedly.
"And eight tis eight?"
"Sixty-four."
"Eight tis nine?"
"I don’t know the rest; I didn’t listen carefully."
"That’s not bad, you have a good mory."
"Hehehe, Fosto said the sa thing about ," Clara boasted, puffing out her chest proudly.
"Then let’s study together."
"Eh... That won’t be necessary." As soon as the little maid heard about studying, she was imdiately terrified, not wanting to lose the precious lazy ti she had finally gained. So she explained, "I’m just a maid; I don’t know anything..."
But before she could finish, Li Yu interrupted her, "Didn’t Fosto tell you that you must fulfill all my requests? Then I request that you study mathematics with these children. It would be a sha to waste such a good mory."
"......"
Clara was completely stunned, standing there motionless, deeply realizing for the first ti what a disaster a slip of the tongue can be.
"Don’t even think about playing dumb or not studying properly in front of afterward. Then I will tell Fosto to replace you with another maid. You wouldn’t want to lose such an easy job, would you?"
"But it’s not easy anymore," the little maid said tearfully.
"I will talk with Fosto about buying you out," Li Yu said. "That way, you don’t have to work in the castle anymore. You can focus on working under , just like them, work five days and rest two days. You are an adult, two silver coins per month, and there are scholarships if you study well."
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