How is this method faster than counting them out, when the end result is 238 stones that you have to count in order to know the answer?
try it for 57 * 48
How is that an answer? In the end you're still going to be counting out 2736 stones either way. In the shaman's algorithm, you'll end up doing so twice and some change, in a much more complicated and easily screwed up algorithm.
Does anextio's reply here help? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6503669)
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The algorithm actually does make sense for positional systems (or compact notations in general). Think of long multiplication: it assumes you can multiply by a one-digit number, and lets you get from there to multiplying by a many-digit number. This is the same thing, but it only assumes you can multiply by two, instead of by any one-digit number. So this is a variant of long multiplication, and equivalent to performing long multiplication in binary. But it only makes sense if you have a compact representation of your numbers, since otherwise you may indeed just perform the multiplication directly by counting out 7 stones for the first goat, 7 for the next, and so on.
It is the version described by Lienhard - which involves counting out the whole number anyway, which you could just as easily do without any special algorithm - that is pointless.
>>Reality doesn't always conform to the PC narrative of how all civilizations are equal. Unless you are a sociology major that is.
I'm not sure what your point is. True positional numerals have a long cultural history that doesn't lend itself easily to an analysis of which culture performed math better.