The Soroban Site of the Visual Math Institute

About Us

The Visual Math Institute is a 501c3 non-profit corporation created in 1975 by Ralph Abraham, originally on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Its mission is to further research and applications of chaos theory, and to contribute to the reform of math teaching in schools on all levels.

The Soroban Project was born in 2005, when Ralph heard that his grandson was suffering from math anxiety in the 2nd grade. It is our conviction that math anxiety is derived from faulty teaching. It has far reaching effects, and most of the efforts to correct it have just made it worse. Our soroban program is intended for parents of preschool children, and teachers of the lower grades.

Everything on this site, so far, is a very preliminary first draft. We hope our method, and this site, will evolve in partnership with a community of users.