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generation gap

Started by billy rubin, September 08, 2020, 05:09:44 PM

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billy rubin

back from the races. slept in and the wide was of to work early in th eam.

so i took my two younger sons to high school this morning. ones is a senior, the other a freshman. asked em what their new classes were.

calculus, metanoia, algebra 2, some other stuff

told em to ask their teacher what calculus was used for. said there was no reason to learn it if they weren't also being taught applications. anyway the conversation moved on to trig tables and i explained how i used to used to have to look up sines and cosines and logarhythms so forth in a little book.

number two son said, yeah, i've heard of that. there's a page from one of those inside the back cover of our book just so you can see what they used to look like. they say, try it out.

i said, i didn't have a calculator until i was mostly through high school. we used slide rules if we needed to do something that didn't require all the decimal places. said they used to make nice circular slide rules if you were a hoity toity engineer, and if you had money you could get the really nice bamboo and ivory versions.

number three son said,

what's a slide rule?

i said, look em up on eBay.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Tank

My year at school was the last to be taught how to use a slide rule and the first to be allowed to use a calculator.
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Dark Lightning

We had that giant 6 foot long slide rule hanging in our math class. I graduated High School in '70. Served in the US Navy, '72-'76. We used slide rules. When I started uni in '77 I got a Texas Instruments SR-40. That was styling! But it wouldn't even do hyperbolic trig. :( When my eldest son needed a calculator ~y2k, we bought him one for less than $100 that would do symbolic calculus! Crazy.

xSilverPhinx

I had to google 'slide rule'...looks complicated. :bigspecs:
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Tank

If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Icarus

I still have a K&E log/log deci-trig slide rule in a nice leather case. I do not use it of course. What the hell I have probably forgotten how to use it.  My Casio fx300 calculator cost $12.  It can do things unheard of at the time I bought the slide rule.   My more advanced Casio fx9600GII  can do matrix math, spread sheets, conics, statistics, graph equations and find precise locations on the curves, and some other stuff that I do not even know how to do. Yikes, it is so much smarter than me that I am truly humbled. 

The world has passed me by. It has been an interesting, sometimes fun, ride however.

Billy, assure your sons that calculus has many practical uses. Calculate instantaneous piston velocity for example. Calculate the dimensions of a a box that uses the least amount of material to hold a given volume of ingredients..and much much more.... Trig is essential for many crafts.  A roofer uses trig, as do carpenters, plumbers, and quilt makers too. Either of these courses of instruction is worth studying if for no other purpose than to expand the borders of ones mind.

Dark Lightning

One underpinning of mathematics is clear reasoning. One can't just skate around a proof. Buckling down and working out problems does wonders for one's thinking ability. Once the headache of forming all those new neurons abates, that is. :lol:

billy rubin



"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Dark Lightning

The slide rule is not hard to master. The scales for multiplication and division are logarithmic, so one merely has to line up the numbers to be manipulated, and read off the answer. Adding or subtracting logarithms corresponds to multiplication and division. Enough knowledge of arithmetic to know whether a number will carry to the next higher or lower power of ten is needed, but that's a basic thing everyone should already know. You are only going to get 3 significant digits, but that's good enough for a lot of calculations we need(ed) to do.

Ecurb Noselrub

Quote from: billy rubin on September 08, 2020, 05:09:44 PM
back from the races. slept in and the wide was of to work early in th eam.

so i took my two younger sons to high school this morning. ones is a senior, the other a freshman. asked em what their new classes were.

calculus, metanoia, algebra 2, some other stuff

told em to ask their teacher what calculus was used for. said there was no reason to learn it if they weren't also being taught applications. anyway the conversation moved on to trig tables and i explained how i used to used to have to look up sines and cosines and logarhythms so forth in a little book.

number two son said, yeah, i've heard of that. there's a page from one of those inside the back cover of our book just so you can see what they used to look like. they say, try it out.

i said, i didn't have a calculator until i was mostly through high school. we used slide rules if we needed to do something that didn't require all the decimal places. said they used to make nice circular slide rules if you were a hoity toity engineer, and if you had money you could get the really nice bamboo and ivory versions.

number three son said,

what's a slide rule?

i said, look em up on eBay.

Metanoia??  That's a Greek word meaning repentance. What kind of class is that?

Randy

Slide rules - my father owned one but I used a pocket calculator in school and later a TRS-80 Model I Level I 4K RAM to do some graphing for me so that I could copy it onto paper.

I missed the days of slide rules but not by much it seems. I graduated high school in 1979.
"Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happens." -- Homer Simpson
"Some people focus on the destination. Atheists focus on the journey." -- Barry Goldberg

Bluenose

When I was flying we still used circular slide rules to do time and distance vs speed calculations as well as fuel consumption calculations etc.  On the back of the slide rule was a navigation computer that allowed you to calculate drift and the heading to steer to make a desired track made good.  I have no idea whether these devices are still used today, but they were quick, accurate, and easy to use.
+++ Divide by cucumber error: please reinstall universe and reboot.  +++

GNU Terry Pratchett


billy rubin

Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on September 09, 2020, 08:19:24 PM

Metanoia??  That's a Greek word meaning repentance. What kind of class is that?

i don't know.

it's the metanoia class. my sons go to a liberal quaker secondary school, one with "deep quaker roots . . . " which really means, "deep quaker advertizing."

i'll ask them. i believe it's just a pretentious name for general humanities.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

xSilverPhinx

One thing's for sure, younger people nowadays don't know what it's like to have dial-up internet and not having access to the landline and internet at the same time. Or, OR! Talking into that huge brick of a Nokia cellphone, without access to internet. They don't know what it's like to have to rewind tapes with a pencil...I daresay such an activity builds character!  :P No wonder young people are so impatient nowadays!  :geezer!:
I am what survives if it's slain - Zack Hemsey


Randy

Or they had to think about BPS and a difference in cost if using one that was higher, like on CompuServe. It wasn't the internet but it was a dial up service. I am not sure the younger generation knows what a modem is.
"Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happens." -- Homer Simpson
"Some people focus on the destination. Atheists focus on the journey." -- Barry Goldberg