Now that I can't find the thread concerned!

Remember that strange circular "calculator" as we all thought it was, with the 16X table in the corner?

We've sort of conditioned ourselves to think trades, particularly engineering but at least manufacturing (e.g. textiles or musical instruments).

Could it be that it had nothing to with such fields, but was used in something like "Numerology" – fortune-telling by numbers?

'

Why do I ask that?

I had had reason to verify a term I recalled from a weird pilot mathematics course at school – a quincunx, for demonstrating either/or series in Probability. This little research showed me two things – firstly the term as I had remembered it is correct but used wrongly for that device (aka a "Galton Board " ) ; and secondly it is also used even more wrongly in astrology, numerology and the like.

Wrong because a true quincunx is a geometrical pattern of 5 ("quin " ) objects, such as the 5-face dots on a gaming die.

However, I'd opened a huge number of peculiar circular charts associated with the term, slightly but suspiciously similar to our "calculator" although usually with mystical symbols rather than numbers.

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So might that curiosity have been a "mystic" toy used by fortune-tellers…. or even just part of some long-forgotten game?

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 05/05/2021 22:31:45