Great thread, it is nice to see fellow math geeks showing their stuff.
Makes me wish I had stayed in a field that would have required me to stay current and use what I learned more often, nothing a quick sit down with the physics book wouln't bring back, but you get my point.
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Originally Posted by Rattlesnake Guy
The slide rule was one it's death bed when I was in high school. I think America would have been well served to keep it around a bit longer as a teaching aid. You had to have a feeling for what the answer would be to keep the number of decimal points correct. I am sure many of us remember it being illegal to have a calculator in school. I agree that kids need to also know how to use a calculator very well. But they also should need to know how to do it just as well in their heads.
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My Calculus Professor in college would still only use the slide rule (when she needed it) to perform her calculations, her statement to us at the beginning of the class was if you intend to use a calculator bring in the manual to tell you how to use it. Very smart person, the funniest thing I remember about her is that while at Princeton she needed a part-time job so she got a job crunching numbers for NASA, it turns out when she was complete they told her she had been doing the hard math to develop the polymer that coats the tiles of the most current style of space craft. It is very impressive to see someone do advanced Calculus out on the chalk board as fast as she could write without slowing down...That board is full slide the next one along, very cool.
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Originally Posted by SAMIAM
Two threads in one........I like it!
The other day at Shaws in Laconia,my bill was $16.16........so I gave the girl a $20 bill plus a quarter and a penny so that I'd get a dime back with my change.She got totally flustered and actually called her mgr over to straighten out the register...I was just chuckling to myself......great job in the schools....let them keep using those calculators.
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Its funny because I used to get hounded all the time in high school for not showing my work on Algebra calcs, and it wasn't until I phycally did the math infront of my teacher without using the calculator or writing out my math did I receive a pass on having to show the work. The unfortunately thing is not everyone can do that and with "No Child Left Behind", our public schools will not produce the full potential of the students that can, and the ones that can't are even more handicapped when it comes to math.