abacus

Recently, a lovely and well-meaning friend texted me one of those trending articles that make you want to trade your smartphone for an abacus and never speak of the internet again.

For example, you can add numbers perfectly using an abacus, in which wooden beads are pushed back and forth to represent arithmetic operations.

The floating ships in the fantasy role-playing game Honkai: Star Rail are populated with traders, gourmets and literati who surf their texts on jade abacuses.

Ms Truss, a former Treasury minister, accused her old department of promoting an "abacus economics" and insisted there needed to be a greater focus on stimulating economic growth.

With an abacus and a slide rule, earlier helpmeets, you had to know something of the mathematical process.