The newspaper lines counting technique reminds me of counting territory in a go game. There are a few ways of doing this, some of them involving counting by 4s, which is quite fast when you can do it (I can’t). After I learned about this I got into the habit of counting everything by 2s, but thinking “1, 2, 3, 4, …” and doubling at the end rather than thinking “2, 4, 6, 8, …”. I keep track of the parity bit visually, if odd. In my experience this roughly doubles the speed I can count, say, people in a room without losing any accuracy.
Incidentally, chunks of even numbers work particularly well for go since dead stones effectively count double, one for the prisoner and one for the empty intersection underneath.
The newspaper lines counting technique reminds me of counting territory in a go game. There are a few ways of doing this, some of them involving counting by 4s, which is quite fast when you can do it (I can’t). After I learned about this I got into the habit of counting everything by 2s, but thinking “1, 2, 3, 4, …” and doubling at the end rather than thinking “2, 4, 6, 8, …”. I keep track of the parity bit visually, if odd. In my experience this roughly doubles the speed I can count, say, people in a room without losing any accuracy.
Incidentally, chunks of even numbers work particularly well for go since dead stones effectively count double, one for the prisoner and one for the empty intersection underneath.