XPost: alt.home.repair   
   From: bowman@montana.com   
      
   On 12/28/2021 08:34 PM, knuttle wrote:   
   > On 12/28/2021 2:22 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:   
   >   
   >> I remember my first trig class, which wasn't very useful. The teacher   
   >> spent the whole period going around and helping students to find the   
   >> right buttons on their calculators. Nothing was said about what trig IS.   
   >   
   > Calculators?   
   >   
   > I bet they would have cost thousands of dollars in my day. :)   
   > And taken up the entire classroom and electrical supply too.   
      
   K&E slide rule with the magnifying cursor for utmost accuracy. Slide   
   rules were a sort of reality check so you didn't wander off the path by   
   several orders of magnitude. Now you punch in numbers and whatever comes   
   out must be the right answer. In physics tests the sins, in descending   
   order, were   
      
   1. complete failure to grasp the concept   
   2. grasping the concept but missing the goal by a factor of 100   
   3. sloppy math but a realistic answer   
      
   My high school algebra teacher used to scold me. I'd skip all the   
   refactoring and juggling terms around the = and write the answer. She   
   would stand over me and recite '95% of the time you have the right   
   answer but you skip steps. If the answer is wrong I don't have a clue why.'   
      
   Somewhere along the line I'd stumbled over the Trachtenberg method and   
   gotten adept at it. Casting out the nines gave a high probability that   
   the product was right. Teachers didn't like that very much either. Of   
   course now if I want to buy 17 widgets at $1.32 apiece I hunt up a   
   calculator.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)